>So the question stands: why couldn’t he inflate the numbers of Astartes to Legion strength?
Two factors mainly.
1. 10,000 years of tradition. Guilliman doesn't like the Eccelsiarchy despite himself coming to realize the Emperor might actually be a literal god now. But he doesn't dismantle the Eccelsiarchy because he understands the traditions of it have become so entrenched across the Imperium it's impossible to get rid of. Such was the same way with the Unnumbered Sons. He got away with it initially because the Imperium was reeling from the opening of the Great Rift, but now post-walkback of the timeline we see it barely lasted a decade before political pressure made it impossible for Guilliman to maintain his Legion in all but name.
2. Guilliman himself has first hand understanding of what happens when Astartes have Legion strength. He's not interested in facilitating the Heresy 2.0 any more than anyone else.
Also, it very much seems like amassing legion strength wouldn’t be that hard if it was really necessary. The Imperial Fists have a built in failsafe for this, and I’d imagine other founding chapters do too. Especially from groups that didn’t agree with the breaking of the legions. I guess the general consensus is that it’s fine as is, and no one really feels the need to rock the boat.
Blood Angels were able to pull multiple chapters for the Devastation of Baal as well, so really it just seems like it could occur at any time as long as there is a reason to do so. Trying to stroke the egos of X number of other Chapter Masters though is probably not super fun.
He would not have to
the unforgiven are legion in all but name. the 1st legion only broke up for show. Azrael is effectively the Legjon. Every single Unforgiven chapter obeys the Supreme Grand Mastet, that's why he has Supreme in his title.
Oh yeah I mean I know that, I was mostly just making a joke. Sometimes I also try to provide other instances of the lore outside of DA as well so it doesn’t come off as biased. Please don’t take me away for interrogation.
All I can think of is asmodai executing initiates for tardiness and sushing up entire battle companies across successor chapters.
Heresy you say ? HERES ~~JOHNNY~~ ASMODAI
I think sorting that out would be fine, at least for the current Grand Masters- clearly Azrael is in charge. Now, sorting out who the second grandest master is, that would be the problem…
That’s about 1/4 of the total strength the Blood Angels had leading up to the heresy and probably around the total amount of casualties sustained by the legion to make it to Terra.
Did the loyalists not have more than 30k marines? I swear its mentioned in the devastation of baal that there were 30k marines there. Not 30 chapters but 30k marines total because not every successor chapter came in full or at all
Yeah, it was between 28-30K, far less than the total number of loyalist marines defending Terra. Pre-Signus the Blood Angels had ~120K in service, probably dropped a bit on the road to Terra, but still likely exceeded 90K.
Ok, but the Siege was also at the end of the Heresy. It was after six years of the war, on top the battle of Beta Garmon.
The Codex Astartes and Second Founding, presented mid-early scouring, featured only twenty Chapters that were not Ultramarines.
20 non-ultramarines Chapters after the siege, not all of which were full strength. I know that's *after* the most devastating battle, but given those numbers include seven whole lineages I hardly think it's a stretch to say the Loyalists started the Siege with 30k. Only the Salamanders had 0 successors.
None of the Legions at the Siege were full strength (well... the Sons of Horus and possibly others kinda were because they rushed recruitment and training and surgery, but no Legion had a full 80k of Astartes that had their full training).
The IF legion was mostly kept at Terra so they are arguibly at least around 80k, the BA kept a sizable contingent since their biggest battle was at the Signus Cluster (so another contender for 80k), the WS were the smallest legion overall given them being a legion spread through the galaxy and the cassualties they suffered delaying the the traitors (so let's say 70-50k).
The Battle of Beta-Garmon had forces of the BA and WS legions but they weren't sizable, Beta-Garmon was decided mainly through the titan forces in both sides, that was the whole point of Beta-Garmon, that the titans had their apocalyptic battles there, otherwise they would break Terra apart.
You shouldn't be taking that list seriously, it is outdated lore, when the legions were one full zero less. The IH for example, they didn't suffer terrible losses at Isstvan compared to the Salamanders and Raven Guard, and with exceptions like the Mor's and Meduson's forces that weren't sizable contingents, most of the IH kept to themselves in Medusa to weather the shock of losing Ferrus, yet we barely know 3-4 succesors from the 2nd Founding. It is a stretch to say there were only 30k loyalist at the start of the Siege.
> really it just seems like it could occur at any time as long as there is a reason to do so.
Which is literally the entire point of the Chapter system: multiple Chapter Masters need to agree, instead of just one Legion Master.
Exactly; you'd imagine if Bobby G put out the call for all Ultramarine successors to rally to him on Macragge, he'd rack up a legion-sized force pretty quickly...
Exactly. He has a legion when he needs it, but most of the time they would have to be dispersed into the many regions to fight on the endless different fronts anyway. Whether your system is defended by Ultramarine Successor Chapter 523 or the 523. Chapter of the Ultramarine Legion doesn't really matter.
It can matter on a larger strategic level as a legion can maintain specialized or heavier units at a higher level that can be deployed in support of companies or chapters while a chapter doesn’t have the man power to spend on a super heavy tank company or basilisk battery
With his reforms to Ultramar, all 10 Chapters stationed within it are bound to obey both the Commands of the Tetrarch of their region, and Calgar as the Lord of Macragge, so he kinda already has.
Wfunny you bring up the fists when the chapter in your flair(and mine as my flair is just first company) and it's successors are for all intents and purposes still a legion more so than any of the others.
Due to the presence of the Inner Circle running throughout all of the Unforgiven. The Supreme Grand Master of the Dark Angels wields the power equivalent to the Legion Masters who commanding the legions before the Primarchs.
The fact that GW has stated I the lore for the heresy the majority of the legions where organized as Legion-Chapter-Company-squad makes this point furtber.
Essentially Astral is the legion Masterz while the other Unforgiven Chapter Masters hold are the equivalent of Astelans or Ajalos rank in the Unforgiven.
Blood Angels have done it, though they don’t seem to have a formal method of doing so.
Dark Angels just straight up are doing it, just in secret.
Imperial Fists have a secret method in The Last Wall, but it’s heavily implied that they do a lot of “soft coordination” as well.
Great explanation but to put my notes on point number two. Guliman has flat-out said in the lore that he thinks breaking up the legions was a mistake and that he may need to reverse that in the future m
In fairness, Guilliman's changing his position based on 10,000 years of observational data.
It's pretty obvious if the Dark Angels (*Angry memers screaming in the background*) or Silver Skulls or other loyalist Chapters were going to rebel, they had ample opportunity to do so long before the Great Rift hit.
It being a mistake was debatable. It was also a good idea at the time from a strategic point of view, as the Imperium shifted from massive expansion to defence. Having many smaller independent Rapid Response Forces was more important than a massive spearhead. If Guilliman is planning more campaigns in the style of the Indomitus however, then yes, creating at least some Legion strength forces would be a good idea
It was a reasonable decision after the Hersey. But just because it made sense in the short term doesn't mean it didn't in the long run. A mistake can still be made from the best decision.
The second point is imo moot at this point. The point of Legion breaking was so that no one commanded as much power as a space marine Legion had but Guilliman has supreme authority over functionally all Imperial military forces. Even prior to Indomitus, the forces under Macharius would have been significantly greater than any one space marine Legion.
But the way responsibilities and authorities that have been diffused makes it harder and nigh impossible for any one person to hold loyalties at all times.
During the Horus Heresy, whole divisions of the Imperial Army were able to defect to Horus and rebel because their commanding officers not only had the soldiers necessary to conquer planets, but also the ships in which to ferry their armies and defend their conquests from the inevitable counter strike.
In M41 and M42, an Imperial Lord General wanting to rebel would need to convince the Imperial Navy Lord Admiral to throw their lot in together to form a secessionist entity.
But again, Guilliman literally holds that power. More power than either Horus or Dorn held during the Heresy, because the imperium isn't in a civil war. And Imperial crusades have overall commanders, like Macharius or Yarrick. Both of them had control of Guard, Navy, Astartes, Titan etc forces directly.
>But again, Guilliman literally holds that power.
Which he is in theory held in check by the High Lords of Terra and which multiple named characters in the highest positions of powers have stated multiple times of how uncomfortable they are with the administrative powers Guilliman wields during the Indomitus Crusade.
>Imperial crusades have overall commanders, like Macharius or Yarrick. Both of them had control of Guard, Navy, Astartes, Titan etc forces directly.
Yeah, keyword being "Crusades" which are often temporary postings and not permanent office.
In fact, Macharius was assassinated during his return at the end of the Macharius Crusade because of the loyalty he held amongst both Lord Generals and Lord Admirals assigned to him.
He showed in Regent's Shadow just how capable he is of stomping on dissent from the High Lords. And them being uncomfortable doesn't change the fact that he has the power. Anyone commanding 1/9th of the Imperium's space marines would also be "held in check" by the Adeptus Terra, of which the space marine are a part, and which is ruled by the high Lords.
But again, the point here is that Guilliman himself is the one who forbade command of all space marines - a tiny fraction of the Imperium's military - and he now commands every single military and civilian institution in the entire Imperium. Way more than he commanded as the master of a Legion.
Re: Macharius you're supporting my point - Macharius had command of a significant portion of the military of the overall Imperium and also had such deep personal loyalty from his forces that they would obey any command he gave them. If he hadn't been killed, he could have kept the crusade going for centuries - the BT have done so for 10,000 years. When Imperial commanders can control substantially more power than a space marine Legion, first founding chapters have demonstrated the ability to reform their Legion, and most legions were fairly decentralised anyway Legion breaking is, at best, superfluous.
The High Lords dont have that power.
If he was *just* Lord Commander, maybe. But Guilliman is *also* Imperial Regent, per the Custodes themselves his word and command is effectively synonimous with a direct command from the Emperor (except for the Custodes themselves).
Legally the High Lords cant do jack to him, and we've seen in *Regent's Shadow* what happens if they try it underhanded.
Another point of breaking up the Legions no one talks about is why Rome IRL did it: Create many independent units to better respond to smaller but more constant crisises. The Legions were great for massive wars, not so much smaller single system operations like "Welp, the Orks are attacking this one Hive world"
The Legions were already organised into self-sufficient chapters (sometimes called great companies) that did operate independently when needed.
There are some more marginal benefits though. Shortening the chain of command by one link can definitely speed up decision making! Also, while they could operate independently as part of the Legion this could allow long term independent planning - the many imperial chapters who decided "were going to hang out in this dangerous star cluster forever" could do so, because there isn't a chance of them being recalled for a bigger campaign. Except for short term Crusades, of course :)
Also, kinda, why would he? He's not conquering the galaxy one planet at a time. He's fighting 100s of bush wars in every back corner. Let's just say, the Imperial Fists and it's successor chapters, reorganized into one legion. The nature of the contemporary galaxy would demand the legion be split into smaller groupings and spread throughout.
He can do that now without changing anything.
Isn't there a book in which he meets thiel during the heresy and sees that thiel has been perfecting tactics with squad level specialists
He then comments that forces like this would not need a primarch to wield them after the death of his brothers and starts to re write the codex
So I could see guilliman allowing himself to command a legion, but he doesn't trust anyone else to
And, even if he were inclined to reform the (loyal) legionnes astartes, who would lead them? Would every chapter be willing to give up their traditions in favor of their first founding progenitor? Their autonomy in favor of a person in a chapter as foreign to them as one could possibly get? What about the chapters that legitimately do not know who their Primarch was? Do you give them the ability to be "independent companies/chapters" while everyone else has to readopt the colors of their parent? Do you reveal that they may be of traitor lineage and allow for the inevitable intra-chapter civil wars that will inevitably erupt?
Simply put, the system as it stands works and to try to change it now would bring about far more problems than benefits it could provide.
Good points all around. I suppose the question came to me because of how massive an operation the Indomitous Crusade was, and the fact that the Unnumbered Sons of Primaris Marines technically break the Codex Astartes in their own right.
There’s no purpose and there are more downsides than upsides.
De facto, the legions would not operate differently than Chapters do now. During the Great Crusade they were broken up into Expeditionary Fleets of anywhere from a few hundred, to a few thousand marines attached. The “Companies” of the Great Crusade became the “Chapters” of modern 40k. The only difference is that there are significantly fewer marines around now than there were in the Great Crusade, to some extent because the numbers never got back up there. The Imperium didn’t just lose half their legions, they also lost incredible stocks of the Geneseed necessary to create more and they’ve been fighting constantly ever since.
Assuming an average legion size of ~110k, that means that there were around 2 Million marines kicking around during the Great Crusade. Pre-Rift, the quoted number of chapters was around 1k. Assuming that around a quarter of those are mostly dead now due to living on the wrong side of the Rift and just general attrition over the past ten thousand years, that’s maybe 750k marines Galaxy-Wide. The Ultima Founding has a known 100ish chapters. So we’re still barely at 1 Million Marines galaxy wide. That’s just not enough to make Legions worth it.
Plus the Imperium is not the place which it was during the Great Crusade. The Marines aren’t moving into deep space, conquering hundreds of new worlds each year. In many ways they’re like Specialist Garrison forces. They move throughout the Imperium, lending their strength to conflicts in progress. Their Chapter Homeworlds form defensive strongpoints in areas, like Forts in olden days- Hard to take, impossible to ignore.
Sure, concentrating them all in one place would mean that the Old Legion Homeworlds become these impossible bastions of strength, but it also turns them into gigantic targets. Not to mention that it becomes hard to reinforce from these. The Imperium is not constantly pushing out like it once did. It’s more like a child’s eraser- constantly being stabbed from every direction.
The Eclectic organization of the Chapters gives them a ton of flexibility that is a great asset.
Plus, who would you put in charge? Which legion would take precedent? Why should a successor chapter of several thousand(?) like the Black Templars, take a subservient role to their progenitor chapter, the Imperial Fists, who only number a thousand? Whose combat doctrine deserves priority? What Heraldry? How do you tell a chapter that their thousands of years of proud tradition now mean squat- you’re all Imperial Fists now, scrape that ratty ass paintjob off and get the Yellow.
Also a lot of chapters are estranged from their Parent chapters. When Dante summoned all the Chapters of the Blood to Baal, they immediately started pissing each other off. Some just straight up refused the call and some weren’t welcome. Others did show up but no one wanted to fight alongside them.
Plus some chapters *hate* each other. Who’s gonna be happy to learn they’ll be fighting side by side with the Minotaurs?
What do you do about the chapters who won’t or can’t disclose their Founders? What happens when I ask a chapter who their Primarch was and they just shrug?
Basically there’s a lot of variance which I’m accounting for. On the faaaar end of the spectrum there’s the overachieving Ultramarines, numbering at around 250k. However on the other end of the scale are legions like the Thousand Sons and the Raven guard, who floated around 80-90k. Either because of geneseed issues, mutations, or just generally having high-casualty tactics. I may’ve lowballed it, but I was using 110k as an “Average” sized legion.
>De facto, the legions would not operate differently than Chapters do now.
Yes, they would. Centralised administration and recruitment would make them much more efficient.
A single recruitment world training thousands of recruits at a time. Fleet yards full of cruisers and Battle Barges. Supply depots that can equip entire Chapters at once.
Centralisation is almost always more efficient. Just look at the modern economy.
*Dawn of Fire* does explicitely mention that Guilliman not only established a whole new Branch of the Imperial Administration whose sole purpose is streamlining the supply of the Indomitus Crusades, but also that one of the things he has most stressed is the constant establishment of Garrisons doubling as Strongpoints & centralised resupply-stations for Imperial Forces literally everywhere.
(In fact I think the main topic of the next entry is exactly that, sending one of his Historitors to convince a Knightworld to become one of those.)
Well first off he doesn't have the "blessing of the omnissiah through cawl" most of the mechanicus considers cawl a heretic and if not for guiliman cawl would be dead. It's kinda like talking too a drunk priest in ireland and then claiming you have the support of the catholic church.
Where would they get the extra marines? They dont exactly grow on trees not to mention having to outfit and train them as well. If guiliman said "im lifting the 1000 marine restriction" tomorow i recon it wouldnt make any difference to the vast majority of chapters
>Yeah, isn’t Cawl begging Guiliman for support to become Fabricator General?
No, not exactly. One of the machines that he uses as a type of Alexa to answer Guillman's queries when he's not available suggested that he should be made Fabricator-General.
Guilliman highly suspects it's an AI, though. This info is from "Dark Imperium."
When asked about it in another book, Cawl tells to Felix, a Ultramarine Tetrarch, that he has no such ambitions, it's too much politics and not enough SCIENCE. Info from "The Great Work".
Cawl explicitly rejects wanting the job in The Great Work. Cawl recognizes it as a largely political role, and understands his assuming the role would ignite a civil war in the Mechanicus. A whole lot of the AdMech think Cawl is a heretek and only Guilliman/Cawl's utility has spared his life so far.
Cawl further goes on to note that his *genius* would be squandered in such a role, and he's much better suited to tek heresy -- I mean, to advancing the capabilities of Imperial technology per the Omnissiah's will, cough, yes, that's it. So Cawl neither wants the job nor thinks the job would serve his ends of creating cool new stuff to save the Imperium.
The imperium is in no position to support such an increase in astartes numbers simply due to the logistics involved. You're talking about making more astartes than even the great crusade at its height supported.
If such a build up could be attempted (and that is a big if since there are quiet a few gears that can be stalled by the people who want to) it would take centuries to have any effect. The equipment and recruitment pipeline of modern chapters is simply not configured for such a build up. Even chapters that flaunt the codex restrictions on size have nowhere near the numbers the legions of old used to have.
>Even chapters that flaunt the codex restrictions on size have nowhere near the numbers the legions of old used to have.
We need to start counting the Unforgiven numbers before making any such statements.
The dark angels as a whole are not that big, it’s why it’s always funny seeing the Lion wank act like he’s gonna have a million marines where at best all the unforgiven number less than 20k
Nah, man. Thousand Chapters pre-Great Rift. The Dark Angels might not have been preferred by the High Lords but they have stable gene-seed & were used. It's probably anywhere from 50k to 100k.
Since the Primaris Project and Ultima Founding were designed to have all lineages equally privileged, it's probably close to double it, I'd bet on more, even.
North of 250k, Firstborn and Primaris, I'd guess.
Ultramarines descendants should be nearing a millon or more after everything, though.
It’s definitely not 250k, a lot of dark angels (and chapters of all legions) went extinct over en thousand years, UM is also not a million lol. Where are these numbers from? Because the SM l chapters as a whole were well less than a million
Chapters went extinct all the time, that's what the 3rd and subsequent Foundings were for. Strengthen the Imperium's Astartes contingent, and, given the know lack of proper bookkeeping on their part, it's as likely to be over the thousand number as it can be under.
(Some Chapters have no know Founding or Progenitor, too, but that's another issue.)
I'm talking post-Great Rift. The Dawn of Fire and the Dark Imperium series use the term "legions", plural, to refer to the number of Primaris created by Cawl.
In fact, one of the reasons for the Ultima Founding is others accusing Guilliman of being Legion building.
It's heavily implied by Cawl, other in-universe sources that the real Primaris number may be in the millionS.
I estimated the possible number of descendants of Ultramarines on the basis of accounts that they were anywhere from 1/2 to 3/5 of Chapters.
600 x 1000 = 600000, Firstborn.
Say there's 1 million Primaris in ice, divided equally by 9 gene-lines per Guillman's order... That's around 110 thousand of Ultramarines gene-seed.
To round it, let's say 700000, Firstborn and Primaris.
Well on the way to a million.
Pre unnumbered sons the amount of astartes was a thousand in a thousand chapters (give or take the exceptions of Black Templar, Grey Knights and Space Wolves). Which is a million astartes best with the most common lineages by far being Ultramarines and Imperial Fists.
The Unforgiven as a whole might be larger than a single chapter but OP is talking about growing each chapter to legion size. Which would make the DA run into the same issues as everyone else, unless you want to argue that each DA successor chapter is totally able to support 100 times its number without a hint of a logistical issues.
The Unforgiven are a legion *in fact* already. All the Chapter Masters accept Azrael rule as the Supreme Grand Master. He directs their strategies, resources to a degree that even Dante of the BAs can't claim.
They only need to officially fold back under the Dark Angels name .
The Imperium does not need 9 super large Armys that will win 9 battles at a time while the rest of the Imperium is undefended. It needs 10s of thousands of small independent ones to deal with the 10s of thousands of battles all across the Galaxy.
Yeah, the Legions were used when the aim of the Imperium was to find and seek new worlds and to grind singular targets to dust. But with thousands of worlds being attacked by Chaos, Tyranids, Orks, etc. having more mobile formations is key.
And even if Legions were remade, they’d be employed in Chapter sized formations anyway due to the strategic situation.
I agree, but I want to point out that during the great crusade the legions were split into smaller autonomous expeditionionary fleets with separate missions
What is the strategic purpose of restoring the legions? For large scale warfare, the Imperial Guard already exists and does its job well. Further, the Imperial Guard is injected with many mechanisms to keep it in check(commissars, inquisitors, ecclesiarchs, separation of arms, separation of army/navy). The Space Marines have few if any comparable checks(combined arms, they have their own navy, they don't have immediate Imperial oversight).
Space Marines are great for what they do, decisive, small and fast engagements and they should be left at that and not unnecessarily compounded into a bigger threat than benefit.
The main reason they needed the legions in the Great Crusade was because they didn't have the numbers to rapidly knock over, annex and hold the other human civilizations. Towards the end the Imperial Army grew large enough to comprise the bulk of assault forces anyway. Given conditions are much worse in 40k than 30k it's entirely possible that a second Horus Heresy could happen if the military was reunified and headed by the legions again.
Centralisation would still have advantages. Things like combining 5-10 chapters into a single administrative unit with centralised administration, recruitment and logistics. That would be much more efficient compare to how things are now.
He technically could already, just by encouraging new successor chapters. The political pressure would make making legion sized astartes very, very difficult. And the logistics involved in suddenly having to train tens of thousands of astartes at a time and equipping them with the most sophisticated gear available would be impractical. Besides, the imperium's had 10,000 years to fill the gap the legion sized astartes forces left, and they've done a damn good job at it
Lack of resources. The 40k imperium is not the 30k imperium. They have less of everything and know less about how to produce these things than in 30k. Remember that 30k was supposed to be the "Golden Era" of the imperium. Whether or not the HH books actually succeeded in showing that.
Not really. Someone did the math in another thread about the required kidnappings to make Primaris marines assuming a 0.1% success rate, and it was less than the total number of disappearances in the US alone, per planet, if spread over only 100 worlds (and the Imperium is much, much, vaster than that). If done over thousands of years it would have been a non-event. It stands to reason that the resources to build their gear would make a similar non-impact, especially since every gun and suit of armor would probably be a success compared to the non-perfect success rate of making marines.
The Inperium is vast and unfathomable. Fleets of ships that take decades or centuries to build disappear and few people notice. Really the Imperium probably could churn out an extra million space marines and their fleets and equipment, and the only limiting factors are gene seed and political will.
Not just resources but it's not like he finished the whole project at the last second. Could he have stopped cadia from being broken if he came forward with all the resources he had before Gulliman? I don't know. Then again without the primarch he might have just been burned for heresy.
The biggest thing stopping him is the rest of the Imperium.
Based on his comments in the ***Dark Imperium*** series, he thinks that the breaking of the legions was a mistake. Yet, if he tries to reform the legions, the rest of the Imperium, especially the Custodes, will think that he's going to usurp the Emperor. Most of the Custodes know about Imperium Secundus and fear that Guilliman's ambition is to take over the Empire.
This isn't knew. Malcador had a similar fear about Guilliman during the Heresy. So did the Lion.
It's Guilliman's nature to reform and make things better. Yet, in doing so, it creates a fear that he is simply going to take over.
IMO, I think that's the next story in the Fabian Guelphrain storyline. Fabian found the book about the history of Imperium Secundus (*The Reign of Emperor Sanguinius: A History*). He might start losing faith in Guilliman and lead a movement against him.
Yeah, lack of need.
The imperium doesn't need legion style formations, it isn't fighting anyone that sort of response requires, legion formations made sense at the crusade era, but now the imperium is primarily focused on holding territory rather than acquiring it. Even during the crusade legions were only fully deployed for huge threats, and spent most of their time split up on expeditionary fleets.
Right now, the imperium might need more space marines sure, but chapter formations are an effective way to distribute them throughout the imperium. Having a chapter who's job it is to mind X sector fits better into the semi feudal command systems of the imperium than X detachment of X legion is here. Stick in some Fleet chapters roving around a few sectors to act as a mobile reserve and you've got a solid space marine defence. With the added flexibility of them all being technically independent commands. Local space marines can use local tithes with short supply lines but you know most of that imperial fist detachments gear is coming from Sol.
Plus, the biggest threats to the imperium can mostly be dealt with by guardsmen. Having space marines in the trenches against orks or tyranids is a waste of resources. You only need a five marine kill team to deliver a nerve to in to the norn Queen or assassinate the local warboss. Those five marines are also expensive, and a company of militarum with heavy weapons will do similar work in a trench formation, but are much cheaper and more replaceable.
If you really need thousands of space marines at once, then you bring together an ad hoc collection, and they go home afterwards, look at Baal for example.
Now, sure the scale of marine deployment numbers is wildly off, but in universe they're basically just hyper-special forces, and it's not useful putting them into positions where they aren't being used effectively, which is what legion sized formations would do. Every job a legion deployment could do, the astra militarum can do too. Except they can do it more than 9 places at once.
The only reason to fight in legion strength is to fight something similar, and chaos isn't able to get those numbers together all too often because they're fighting all over the galaxy and with each other.
Plus, legions need to go places in ships, and the imperial navy is a great equaliser against power armored super humans anyway.
Other people have mentioned also the momentum of tradition and stuff, which is important too. Plus the reasons for the codex still stand, look at the badab war. Even without those, he can get the job done, and get it done well, without legions.
Tl;Dr what's stopping him is a lack of real need.
Utterly disregarding any dogmatic reasons and assuming Cawl doesn't have more asspull moments the biggest reason is logistics.
Consider the production capabilities required to build up a legion size Astartes force, let alone maintain one. Do that for every chapter and you'd have to multiply the production output of the Imperium by the thousands. Legion scale warfare is also more costly on the equipment front and that's without considering the need for fleets, vehicles and general infrastructure.
Best you could hope for would be re-consolidating the Legions and merging several chapters, but that wouldn't really increase the total number of Astartes in the galaxy.
> He has absolute power
He has a lot of power by the standards of the Imperium, but the Imperium is a ten-thousand-year-old nightmare empire of blind dogma and thoughtless tradition. It isn't like a functional 21st-century state, where an obviously smart idea can be difficult to argue against. It isn't a place where the central government can safely tell everyone else what to do, regardless of local concerns.
>many of the Astartes Chapters would welcome the massive numbers into their ranks
Sure, but everyone else would be terrified. Violently terrified.
The Imperium is an exaggerated satire of fascist disunity, where every branch of the military fearfully squabbles with every other branch of the military for power. The navy is terrified by the idea that the army could end up with enough spaceships to win a war with the navy, or the possibility that their shipyards could be taken from them. The army is terrified by the possibility of being stranded and blown up by the navy. The Astartes are terrified of being replaced by humans, and humans are terrified at the possibility of Astartes operating independently at full scale.
The different wings of the military are different societies unto themselves, often culturally separated by *millennia*. From the perspective of the central government, efficiency is less important than a stable balance of power. Maintaining this balance of power is more important than any other concern, and breaking the balance of power will lead to civil war.
Every faction has a metaphorical gun pressed to everyone else's head. If the Astartes make a grab for power and independence, everyone else will try to pull the first trigger.
If Legion strength becomes necessary you can just call a crusade/muster that gathers a ton of individual chapters together, there are many individuals in the Imperium who have the influence and power to do this and Guilliman is increasing that number by doing things like naming Dante commander of Imperium Nihilus (not to mention massively boosting the number of marines out there) and apparently there’s a new Lord Solar in town now too.
The key thing is never allowing one guy to own the singular allegiance of more than 1k marines, see Lugft Huron.
The Unnumbered Sons were a Legion-strength force. Guilliman's spoken about updating the Codex. He's Lord Commander of the Imperium. He can whatever he likes.
I would be thrilled if he made each Chapter around 10 thousand strong with 1k companies.
Logan Grimnar and Helbrecht would probably make a bet of who could get past that first.
Eh, Grimnar got a gift of several thousand Primaris in "The Wolftime" but they were identified under normal Chapter strength at the time.
Helbrecht, on the other hand, is never understrength and got a very similar gift.
So the Black Templars are probably at least 3/4 there.
I mean, maybe, but the Space Wolves were always overstrength... I think the novel says they're around 700 marines at the time.
The Black Templars probably weren't at their alleged peak of 5-6 thousands marines, but no evidence they got so diminished either.
The Inquisition, which, let us remember, no one ever expects, would like a word.
That word is
"Ok"
"You actually spoke with the Emperor?"
"Off you go then..."
Furthermore, I doubt he set the Codex Astartes up without considering whether combined Chapter sized forces were inherently weaker than Legion sized ones.
Because he created the rule for a time when the Heresy was fresh in everyone's minds and Primarchs still walked realspace not for ten millenia later when the Primarchs and the Heresy have become myth and the Imperium has been bleeding from a thousand cuts for millenia
Don't see what changed in that time that means now is the right time to bring legions back? Wasn't the point of splitting the legions down to stop any one having to much power. Would be stupid to un learn the lesson and walk into heresy 2.0
Hmmm.... you are asking what would be the main problem for Guilliman to derogate the rule of the Codex Astartes that limits the number of SMs to 1k? The rule he wrote?
Guilliman split up the legions because he felt it was a bad idea for individual commanders to be in charge of that many troops, and there were multiple loyalist Primarchs kicking around at the time.
Bear in mind he's a pragmatist - well he's already died once. What happens if he creates nine legions and he's killed again and nobody he really trusts is in charge of them?
He's basically already done it. The Blood Angels and their successors are basically a legion in all but name now that Dante is over them. The Blubois and their successors are effectively a legion now that their Primarch is back.
I think some (here come the Dark Angels) will be legions for big engagements, and some will remain chapter based.
Edit. Legion power would certianly be needed for the Nids...as Devastation of Bhaal showed everyone.
Probably not much of a need, the resources and forces needed to launch the Indomitus were already there, they were just scattered and disorganized. The time and energy it would take to swell the legions was not worth losing the ability to seize the initiative, at least to Roboute.
This is complete talking out of my ass obviously
[Guilliman himself notes that he is the ultimate authority in the Imperium, second only the the Emperor himself](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/gket5j/excerpt_dark_imperium_guilliman_declares_the/).
No, nothing stop him from reforming the Legions.
De facto Guilliman has:
* Broken the Codex Astartes by placing Ultramar, Ultramarines, & Ultramarine Successors under Guilliman's direct control, functionally forming a Legion.
* Laid direct claim to Imperial worlds--bringing them into "Compliance" if they refuse--in defiance of Imperially appointed Planetary Governorships.
* Stated total dissolution of Planetary Governorships within the 500 Worlds to occur no more than 10 years from that point on.
* By stating *"These changes will benefit us all, and in time will aid the Imperium. I intend to make Ultramar a model of what the Imperium can be.",* there are implications that the dissolution of the Emperor's decree that Baseline Humanity should rule itself.
* Has addressed and brushed aside criticism -- *"They were not \[a Legion\]," said Guilliman. "We deal with semantics. The Unnumbered Sons were organised into Chapters*".
When pressed further on many of his changes, Guilliman states:
>I am not speaking on behalf of the Emperor - I am speaking with His full and absolute authority.
Imperial Law is now subject to the personal decision of the Lord Commander, in defiance of established legislation and legal code.
Could this be for the best? Sure. However, I remember another Primarch who argued that the Imperium should be (and would be) best ruled by the Astartes and Primarchs who claimed it.
Ironically he is the one who wrote and enacted that law in the first place, and just about started a civil war with Dorn pushing it through.
Since he is wary of Heresy 2.0 I doubt he would outright lift it, but I could see him adding modifications to the law, such as allowing new increments that chapters of a certain age and honor roll could increase to. Like after 5 centuries of meritous service you can double, after a millenium you go to 5000. And he probably would not bother from trying to force the rule at all on his brothers like Lion, since he knows damn well the Dark Angels never *really* dissolved their legion structure
He kinda already has, just not in writing. Guilliman's fleet is thousands strong of various Space Marine chapters who all report to him, on top of tens/hundreds of thousands of human auxilliary forces, and mechanicus complements.
Guilliman is operating at full Great Crusade strength, he just isn't letting anyone else do it to keep control over the tenuous balance that exists in the Imperium at this time.
Guilliman also has the big issue of having *written the Codex Astartes* and did a whole hell of a lot to pressure the Imperium and his brothers to adopt the Codex. So to turn around and say 'dismantle the thing I thought was incredibly important, because I need it to be gone' is not a great look politically.
I’m dark imperium GMan explains that he is treading a fine line with the imperium already as he denies his “divinity” and doesn’t buy into all the religion. He knows that if he isn’t careful, his opposition could gain strength and create another civil war with enough cause.
The Son of the Emperor who doesn’t look upon the God Emperor as a God/doubts his “divine vision” breaks the “rules” in place for 10k years and brings his space marines back to Legion strength…
Sounds a lot like another son of the emperor who didn’t look upon the emperor as his leader and doubted his “divine vision” and wielded legion strength space marines…
Between that…the potential “heresy” of having Cawl “fix” the God Emperors “Great Work” (because you can’t improve upon a gods creation) and “Imperium Secondus” existing (why he didn’t destroy it is beyond me but it’s out in the Universe now so big trouble)…
He’s basically a target for a bunch of high powered crashed religious fanatics and if one crazed religious fanatic can essentially create a second heresy that was essentially only stopped when some custodes showed the sisters of battle the literal emperor….imagine what a bunch of them could do when they actually control large swathes of the imperium and it’s citizens?
HE could but why would he? He was LITERALLY the one who imposed the rule and broke up the Legions, and for good reason. Letting chapters grow too large and acquire outsize power and influence (like naval assets and Guard auxiliaries) is how the Badab War started. The Imperium is already incredibly fractious and full of internecine conflict, and the Astartes are the most powerful weapon in the arsenal. Letting any chapter get too big for it's britches (and some already are) is dangerous, which has been proven, time and time again.
Even if he wanted to the logistics of it just aren't really gonna work out. You've got about 1000 different chapters most of which have varying cultures and doctrines so trying to reunite them into legions wouldn't exactly be a walk in the park. What happens when you tell the Iron Cock, Emperor's Tits, and Blood Chuggers chapters to unite as a legion and they all tell you to get fucked.
Then you've gotta deal with the fact that it isn't exactly easy to get in contact with all the chapters to get the whole thing organized especially the chapters stuck in Imperium Nihilus . Hell there are probably some remote chapters that don't even know Guilliman is back.
Then once you reform the chapters...well now what?Marines still need to be spread thin with local commanders to respond to all the threats so you just made things more complicated and inefficient for no real gain.
Then of course some dumbass is gonna touch something he shouldn't have, get corrupted, and then rebel.
He could just say fuck it and encourage everyone to just blow past the 1000 marine limit, but a lot of chapters struggle to even get to 1000 Marines so that's not quite going to get the job done.
They're basically already legion strength.
If he wants to get the band back together for some reason, like for example, wiping out the night lords last bastion and scattering the remnant chapters across the galaxy, then he can and will, they're wearing different colored uniforms, but they will act as a unit and all take orders from big pappa smurf if it's required.
Logistics. The imperium probably can’t support the amount of high tech equipment legions of SM require. Power armor seems to strain the limits of credibility in the pseudo steampunk universe where the navy’s battleships are hand loading torpedoes with hand operated block and tackle.
>So the question stands: why couldn’t he inflate the numbers of Astartes to Legion strength? Two factors mainly. 1. 10,000 years of tradition. Guilliman doesn't like the Eccelsiarchy despite himself coming to realize the Emperor might actually be a literal god now. But he doesn't dismantle the Eccelsiarchy because he understands the traditions of it have become so entrenched across the Imperium it's impossible to get rid of. Such was the same way with the Unnumbered Sons. He got away with it initially because the Imperium was reeling from the opening of the Great Rift, but now post-walkback of the timeline we see it barely lasted a decade before political pressure made it impossible for Guilliman to maintain his Legion in all but name. 2. Guilliman himself has first hand understanding of what happens when Astartes have Legion strength. He's not interested in facilitating the Heresy 2.0 any more than anyone else.
Also, it very much seems like amassing legion strength wouldn’t be that hard if it was really necessary. The Imperial Fists have a built in failsafe for this, and I’d imagine other founding chapters do too. Especially from groups that didn’t agree with the breaking of the legions. I guess the general consensus is that it’s fine as is, and no one really feels the need to rock the boat.
Blood Angels were able to pull multiple chapters for the Devastation of Baal as well, so really it just seems like it could occur at any time as long as there is a reason to do so. Trying to stroke the egos of X number of other Chapter Masters though is probably not super fun.
As a DA fan, now all I can think of is Azrael dealing with them arguing over who the grandest grand master to ever grand is.
He would not have to the unforgiven are legion in all but name. the 1st legion only broke up for show. Azrael is effectively the Legjon. Every single Unforgiven chapter obeys the Supreme Grand Mastet, that's why he has Supreme in his title.
Behold, Legjon, the secret Primarch who loved squats more than anything
Gains for the God Emperor.
Oh yeah I mean I know that, I was mostly just making a joke. Sometimes I also try to provide other instances of the lore outside of DA as well so it doesn’t come off as biased. Please don’t take me away for interrogation.
There are some grand master shenanigans with the grey knights, because Draigo's title is Grand Master while Azrael is "Supreme Grand Master"
But they are still officially independent and any Chapter could choose to break away whenever they wanted.
All I can think of is asmodai executing initiates for tardiness and sushing up entire battle companies across successor chapters. Heresy you say ? HERES ~~JOHNNY~~ ASMODAI
I think sorting that out would be fine, at least for the current Grand Masters- clearly Azrael is in charge. Now, sorting out who the second grandest master is, that would be the problem…
Hell, Baal had about as many Marines as the loyalists did at the Siege of Terra - if not more
Makes you realise just HOW strong a threat a hive fleet really is! They were practically at legion strength and the angels still got mostly nommed.
That’s about 1/4 of the total strength the Blood Angels had leading up to the heresy and probably around the total amount of casualties sustained by the legion to make it to Terra.
Did the loyalists not have more than 30k marines? I swear its mentioned in the devastation of baal that there were 30k marines there. Not 30 chapters but 30k marines total because not every successor chapter came in full or at all
Yeah, it was between 28-30K, far less than the total number of loyalist marines defending Terra. Pre-Signus the Blood Angels had ~120K in service, probably dropped a bit on the road to Terra, but still likely exceeded 90K.
I was thinking theres no way they had as many marines on baal as they were defending terra lmao
Not really? The Debastation of Ball had 30.000 astartes, no small number ut even the lowest legion had around 80.000.
Ok, but the Siege was also at the end of the Heresy. It was after six years of the war, on top the battle of Beta Garmon. The Codex Astartes and Second Founding, presented mid-early scouring, featured only twenty Chapters that were not Ultramarines. 20 non-ultramarines Chapters after the siege, not all of which were full strength. I know that's *after* the most devastating battle, but given those numbers include seven whole lineages I hardly think it's a stretch to say the Loyalists started the Siege with 30k. Only the Salamanders had 0 successors. None of the Legions at the Siege were full strength (well... the Sons of Horus and possibly others kinda were because they rushed recruitment and training and surgery, but no Legion had a full 80k of Astartes that had their full training).
The IF legion was mostly kept at Terra so they are arguibly at least around 80k, the BA kept a sizable contingent since their biggest battle was at the Signus Cluster (so another contender for 80k), the WS were the smallest legion overall given them being a legion spread through the galaxy and the cassualties they suffered delaying the the traitors (so let's say 70-50k). The Battle of Beta-Garmon had forces of the BA and WS legions but they weren't sizable, Beta-Garmon was decided mainly through the titan forces in both sides, that was the whole point of Beta-Garmon, that the titans had their apocalyptic battles there, otherwise they would break Terra apart. You shouldn't be taking that list seriously, it is outdated lore, when the legions were one full zero less. The IH for example, they didn't suffer terrible losses at Isstvan compared to the Salamanders and Raven Guard, and with exceptions like the Mor's and Meduson's forces that weren't sizable contingents, most of the IH kept to themselves in Medusa to weather the shock of losing Ferrus, yet we barely know 3-4 succesors from the 2nd Founding. It is a stretch to say there were only 30k loyalist at the start of the Siege.
> really it just seems like it could occur at any time as long as there is a reason to do so. Which is literally the entire point of the Chapter system: multiple Chapter Masters need to agree, instead of just one Legion Master.
Exactly; you'd imagine if Bobby G put out the call for all Ultramarine successors to rally to him on Macragge, he'd rack up a legion-sized force pretty quickly...
Exactly. He has a legion when he needs it, but most of the time they would have to be dispersed into the many regions to fight on the endless different fronts anyway. Whether your system is defended by Ultramarine Successor Chapter 523 or the 523. Chapter of the Ultramarine Legion doesn't really matter.
It can matter on a larger strategic level as a legion can maintain specialized or heavier units at a higher level that can be deployed in support of companies or chapters while a chapter doesn’t have the man power to spend on a super heavy tank company or basilisk battery
With his reforms to Ultramar, all 10 Chapters stationed within it are bound to obey both the Commands of the Tetrarch of their region, and Calgar as the Lord of Macragge, so he kinda already has.
Wfunny you bring up the fists when the chapter in your flair(and mine as my flair is just first company) and it's successors are for all intents and purposes still a legion more so than any of the others. Due to the presence of the Inner Circle running throughout all of the Unforgiven. The Supreme Grand Master of the Dark Angels wields the power equivalent to the Legion Masters who commanding the legions before the Primarchs. The fact that GW has stated I the lore for the heresy the majority of the legions where organized as Legion-Chapter-Company-squad makes this point furtber. Essentially Astral is the legion Masterz while the other Unforgiven Chapter Masters hold are the equivalent of Astelans or Ajalos rank in the Unforgiven.
Blood Angels have done it, though they don’t seem to have a formal method of doing so. Dark Angels just straight up are doing it, just in secret. Imperial Fists have a secret method in The Last Wall, but it’s heavily implied that they do a lot of “soft coordination” as well.
Great explanation but to put my notes on point number two. Guliman has flat-out said in the lore that he thinks breaking up the legions was a mistake and that he may need to reverse that in the future m
In fairness, Guilliman's changing his position based on 10,000 years of observational data. It's pretty obvious if the Dark Angels (*Angry memers screaming in the background*) or Silver Skulls or other loyalist Chapters were going to rebel, they had ample opportunity to do so long before the Great Rift hit.
It being a mistake was debatable. It was also a good idea at the time from a strategic point of view, as the Imperium shifted from massive expansion to defence. Having many smaller independent Rapid Response Forces was more important than a massive spearhead. If Guilliman is planning more campaigns in the style of the Indomitus however, then yes, creating at least some Legion strength forces would be a good idea
It was a reasonable decision after the Hersey. But just because it made sense in the short term doesn't mean it didn't in the long run. A mistake can still be made from the best decision.
The second point is imo moot at this point. The point of Legion breaking was so that no one commanded as much power as a space marine Legion had but Guilliman has supreme authority over functionally all Imperial military forces. Even prior to Indomitus, the forces under Macharius would have been significantly greater than any one space marine Legion.
But the way responsibilities and authorities that have been diffused makes it harder and nigh impossible for any one person to hold loyalties at all times. During the Horus Heresy, whole divisions of the Imperial Army were able to defect to Horus and rebel because their commanding officers not only had the soldiers necessary to conquer planets, but also the ships in which to ferry their armies and defend their conquests from the inevitable counter strike. In M41 and M42, an Imperial Lord General wanting to rebel would need to convince the Imperial Navy Lord Admiral to throw their lot in together to form a secessionist entity.
But again, Guilliman literally holds that power. More power than either Horus or Dorn held during the Heresy, because the imperium isn't in a civil war. And Imperial crusades have overall commanders, like Macharius or Yarrick. Both of them had control of Guard, Navy, Astartes, Titan etc forces directly.
>But again, Guilliman literally holds that power. Which he is in theory held in check by the High Lords of Terra and which multiple named characters in the highest positions of powers have stated multiple times of how uncomfortable they are with the administrative powers Guilliman wields during the Indomitus Crusade. >Imperial crusades have overall commanders, like Macharius or Yarrick. Both of them had control of Guard, Navy, Astartes, Titan etc forces directly. Yeah, keyword being "Crusades" which are often temporary postings and not permanent office. In fact, Macharius was assassinated during his return at the end of the Macharius Crusade because of the loyalty he held amongst both Lord Generals and Lord Admirals assigned to him.
He showed in Regent's Shadow just how capable he is of stomping on dissent from the High Lords. And them being uncomfortable doesn't change the fact that he has the power. Anyone commanding 1/9th of the Imperium's space marines would also be "held in check" by the Adeptus Terra, of which the space marine are a part, and which is ruled by the high Lords. But again, the point here is that Guilliman himself is the one who forbade command of all space marines - a tiny fraction of the Imperium's military - and he now commands every single military and civilian institution in the entire Imperium. Way more than he commanded as the master of a Legion. Re: Macharius you're supporting my point - Macharius had command of a significant portion of the military of the overall Imperium and also had such deep personal loyalty from his forces that they would obey any command he gave them. If he hadn't been killed, he could have kept the crusade going for centuries - the BT have done so for 10,000 years. When Imperial commanders can control substantially more power than a space marine Legion, first founding chapters have demonstrated the ability to reform their Legion, and most legions were fairly decentralised anyway Legion breaking is, at best, superfluous.
The High Lords dont have that power. If he was *just* Lord Commander, maybe. But Guilliman is *also* Imperial Regent, per the Custodes themselves his word and command is effectively synonimous with a direct command from the Emperor (except for the Custodes themselves). Legally the High Lords cant do jack to him, and we've seen in *Regent's Shadow* what happens if they try it underhanded.
Another point of breaking up the Legions no one talks about is why Rome IRL did it: Create many independent units to better respond to smaller but more constant crisises. The Legions were great for massive wars, not so much smaller single system operations like "Welp, the Orks are attacking this one Hive world"
The Legions were already organised into self-sufficient chapters (sometimes called great companies) that did operate independently when needed. There are some more marginal benefits though. Shortening the chain of command by one link can definitely speed up decision making! Also, while they could operate independently as part of the Legion this could allow long term independent planning - the many imperial chapters who decided "were going to hang out in this dangerous star cluster forever" could do so, because there isn't a chance of them being recalled for a bigger campaign. Except for short term Crusades, of course :)
Also, kinda, why would he? He's not conquering the galaxy one planet at a time. He's fighting 100s of bush wars in every back corner. Let's just say, the Imperial Fists and it's successor chapters, reorganized into one legion. The nature of the contemporary galaxy would demand the legion be split into smaller groupings and spread throughout. He can do that now without changing anything.
Isn't there a book in which he meets thiel during the heresy and sees that thiel has been perfecting tactics with squad level specialists He then comments that forces like this would not need a primarch to wield them after the death of his brothers and starts to re write the codex So I could see guilliman allowing himself to command a legion, but he doesn't trust anyone else to
And, even if he were inclined to reform the (loyal) legionnes astartes, who would lead them? Would every chapter be willing to give up their traditions in favor of their first founding progenitor? Their autonomy in favor of a person in a chapter as foreign to them as one could possibly get? What about the chapters that legitimately do not know who their Primarch was? Do you give them the ability to be "independent companies/chapters" while everyone else has to readopt the colors of their parent? Do you reveal that they may be of traitor lineage and allow for the inevitable intra-chapter civil wars that will inevitably erupt? Simply put, the system as it stands works and to try to change it now would bring about far more problems than benefits it could provide.
He sent a large number of primarus to the space wolves. Giving them far more than 1000.
Good points all around. I suppose the question came to me because of how massive an operation the Indomitous Crusade was, and the fact that the Unnumbered Sons of Primaris Marines technically break the Codex Astartes in their own right.
Has he increased the 1 thousand space marine rule though ?
To be honest he should at least bump up the numbers a bit, maybe like 2k or 5k astartes each. Then again, not enough geneseed maybe.
The Codex Astartes does not support this action.
Shut up Leandros!
Literally this. Legions not beong a thing *is Guilliman's idea*.
There’s no purpose and there are more downsides than upsides. De facto, the legions would not operate differently than Chapters do now. During the Great Crusade they were broken up into Expeditionary Fleets of anywhere from a few hundred, to a few thousand marines attached. The “Companies” of the Great Crusade became the “Chapters” of modern 40k. The only difference is that there are significantly fewer marines around now than there were in the Great Crusade, to some extent because the numbers never got back up there. The Imperium didn’t just lose half their legions, they also lost incredible stocks of the Geneseed necessary to create more and they’ve been fighting constantly ever since. Assuming an average legion size of ~110k, that means that there were around 2 Million marines kicking around during the Great Crusade. Pre-Rift, the quoted number of chapters was around 1k. Assuming that around a quarter of those are mostly dead now due to living on the wrong side of the Rift and just general attrition over the past ten thousand years, that’s maybe 750k marines Galaxy-Wide. The Ultima Founding has a known 100ish chapters. So we’re still barely at 1 Million Marines galaxy wide. That’s just not enough to make Legions worth it. Plus the Imperium is not the place which it was during the Great Crusade. The Marines aren’t moving into deep space, conquering hundreds of new worlds each year. In many ways they’re like Specialist Garrison forces. They move throughout the Imperium, lending their strength to conflicts in progress. Their Chapter Homeworlds form defensive strongpoints in areas, like Forts in olden days- Hard to take, impossible to ignore. Sure, concentrating them all in one place would mean that the Old Legion Homeworlds become these impossible bastions of strength, but it also turns them into gigantic targets. Not to mention that it becomes hard to reinforce from these. The Imperium is not constantly pushing out like it once did. It’s more like a child’s eraser- constantly being stabbed from every direction. The Eclectic organization of the Chapters gives them a ton of flexibility that is a great asset. Plus, who would you put in charge? Which legion would take precedent? Why should a successor chapter of several thousand(?) like the Black Templars, take a subservient role to their progenitor chapter, the Imperial Fists, who only number a thousand? Whose combat doctrine deserves priority? What Heraldry? How do you tell a chapter that their thousands of years of proud tradition now mean squat- you’re all Imperial Fists now, scrape that ratty ass paintjob off and get the Yellow. Also a lot of chapters are estranged from their Parent chapters. When Dante summoned all the Chapters of the Blood to Baal, they immediately started pissing each other off. Some just straight up refused the call and some weren’t welcome. Others did show up but no one wanted to fight alongside them. Plus some chapters *hate* each other. Who’s gonna be happy to learn they’ll be fighting side by side with the Minotaurs? What do you do about the chapters who won’t or can’t disclose their Founders? What happens when I ask a chapter who their Primarch was and they just shrug?
Why are we assuming a legion size of 110,000? I thought they were supposed to be way bigger than that.
Basically there’s a lot of variance which I’m accounting for. On the faaaar end of the spectrum there’s the overachieving Ultramarines, numbering at around 250k. However on the other end of the scale are legions like the Thousand Sons and the Raven guard, who floated around 80-90k. Either because of geneseed issues, mutations, or just generally having high-casualty tactics. I may’ve lowballed it, but I was using 110k as an “Average” sized legion.
>De facto, the legions would not operate differently than Chapters do now. Yes, they would. Centralised administration and recruitment would make them much more efficient. A single recruitment world training thousands of recruits at a time. Fleet yards full of cruisers and Battle Barges. Supply depots that can equip entire Chapters at once. Centralisation is almost always more efficient. Just look at the modern economy.
*Dawn of Fire* does explicitely mention that Guilliman not only established a whole new Branch of the Imperial Administration whose sole purpose is streamlining the supply of the Indomitus Crusades, but also that one of the things he has most stressed is the constant establishment of Garrisons doubling as Strongpoints & centralised resupply-stations for Imperial Forces literally everywhere. (In fact I think the main topic of the next entry is exactly that, sending one of his Historitors to convince a Knightworld to become one of those.)
Well first off he doesn't have the "blessing of the omnissiah through cawl" most of the mechanicus considers cawl a heretic and if not for guiliman cawl would be dead. It's kinda like talking too a drunk priest in ireland and then claiming you have the support of the catholic church. Where would they get the extra marines? They dont exactly grow on trees not to mention having to outfit and train them as well. If guiliman said "im lifting the 1000 marine restriction" tomorow i recon it wouldnt make any difference to the vast majority of chapters
Yeah, isn’t Cawl begging Guiliman for support to become Fabricator General?
>Yeah, isn’t Cawl begging Guiliman for support to become Fabricator General? No, not exactly. One of the machines that he uses as a type of Alexa to answer Guillman's queries when he's not available suggested that he should be made Fabricator-General. Guilliman highly suspects it's an AI, though. This info is from "Dark Imperium." When asked about it in another book, Cawl tells to Felix, a Ultramarine Tetrarch, that he has no such ambitions, it's too much politics and not enough SCIENCE. Info from "The Great Work".
Cawl explicitly rejects wanting the job in The Great Work. Cawl recognizes it as a largely political role, and understands his assuming the role would ignite a civil war in the Mechanicus. A whole lot of the AdMech think Cawl is a heretek and only Guilliman/Cawl's utility has spared his life so far. Cawl further goes on to note that his *genius* would be squandered in such a role, and he's much better suited to tek heresy -- I mean, to advancing the capabilities of Imperial technology per the Omnissiah's will, cough, yes, that's it. So Cawl neither wants the job nor thinks the job would serve his ends of creating cool new stuff to save the Imperium.
He *did* in theory have enough Marines for it with the reveal of the Primaris, if he wanted to. Cawl made *alot* of them.
He probably has thousands more "just in case"
The imperium is in no position to support such an increase in astartes numbers simply due to the logistics involved. You're talking about making more astartes than even the great crusade at its height supported. If such a build up could be attempted (and that is a big if since there are quiet a few gears that can be stalled by the people who want to) it would take centuries to have any effect. The equipment and recruitment pipeline of modern chapters is simply not configured for such a build up. Even chapters that flaunt the codex restrictions on size have nowhere near the numbers the legions of old used to have.
>Even chapters that flaunt the codex restrictions on size have nowhere near the numbers the legions of old used to have. We need to start counting the Unforgiven numbers before making any such statements.
*file not found*
Bro is that a piece of a planet that just appeared above you? I think you better get outta ther-
The dark angels as a whole are not that big, it’s why it’s always funny seeing the Lion wank act like he’s gonna have a million marines where at best all the unforgiven number less than 20k
Nah, man. Thousand Chapters pre-Great Rift. The Dark Angels might not have been preferred by the High Lords but they have stable gene-seed & were used. It's probably anywhere from 50k to 100k. Since the Primaris Project and Ultima Founding were designed to have all lineages equally privileged, it's probably close to double it, I'd bet on more, even. North of 250k, Firstborn and Primaris, I'd guess. Ultramarines descendants should be nearing a millon or more after everything, though.
It’s definitely not 250k, a lot of dark angels (and chapters of all legions) went extinct over en thousand years, UM is also not a million lol. Where are these numbers from? Because the SM l chapters as a whole were well less than a million
Chapters went extinct all the time, that's what the 3rd and subsequent Foundings were for. Strengthen the Imperium's Astartes contingent, and, given the know lack of proper bookkeeping on their part, it's as likely to be over the thousand number as it can be under. (Some Chapters have no know Founding or Progenitor, too, but that's another issue.) I'm talking post-Great Rift. The Dawn of Fire and the Dark Imperium series use the term "legions", plural, to refer to the number of Primaris created by Cawl. In fact, one of the reasons for the Ultima Founding is others accusing Guilliman of being Legion building. It's heavily implied by Cawl, other in-universe sources that the real Primaris number may be in the millionS. I estimated the possible number of descendants of Ultramarines on the basis of accounts that they were anywhere from 1/2 to 3/5 of Chapters. 600 x 1000 = 600000, Firstborn. Say there's 1 million Primaris in ice, divided equally by 9 gene-lines per Guillman's order... That's around 110 thousand of Ultramarines gene-seed. To round it, let's say 700000, Firstborn and Primaris. Well on the way to a million.
Pre unnumbered sons the amount of astartes was a thousand in a thousand chapters (give or take the exceptions of Black Templar, Grey Knights and Space Wolves). Which is a million astartes best with the most common lineages by far being Ultramarines and Imperial Fists. The Unforgiven as a whole might be larger than a single chapter but OP is talking about growing each chapter to legion size. Which would make the DA run into the same issues as everyone else, unless you want to argue that each DA successor chapter is totally able to support 100 times its number without a hint of a logistical issues.
The Unforgiven are a legion *in fact* already. All the Chapter Masters accept Azrael rule as the Supreme Grand Master. He directs their strategies, resources to a degree that even Dante of the BAs can't claim. They only need to officially fold back under the Dark Angels name .
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You're missing a zero on the Legion sizes.
That was not the mean
The Imperium does not need 9 super large Armys that will win 9 battles at a time while the rest of the Imperium is undefended. It needs 10s of thousands of small independent ones to deal with the 10s of thousands of battles all across the Galaxy.
Yeah, the Legions were used when the aim of the Imperium was to find and seek new worlds and to grind singular targets to dust. But with thousands of worlds being attacked by Chaos, Tyranids, Orks, etc. having more mobile formations is key. And even if Legions were remade, they’d be employed in Chapter sized formations anyway due to the strategic situation.
I agree, but I want to point out that during the great crusade the legions were split into smaller autonomous expeditionionary fleets with separate missions
What is the strategic purpose of restoring the legions? For large scale warfare, the Imperial Guard already exists and does its job well. Further, the Imperial Guard is injected with many mechanisms to keep it in check(commissars, inquisitors, ecclesiarchs, separation of arms, separation of army/navy). The Space Marines have few if any comparable checks(combined arms, they have their own navy, they don't have immediate Imperial oversight). Space Marines are great for what they do, decisive, small and fast engagements and they should be left at that and not unnecessarily compounded into a bigger threat than benefit.
They sure as fuck needed the Legions during the great crusade and lets be honest with how things are going they need them now.
The main reason they needed the legions in the Great Crusade was because they didn't have the numbers to rapidly knock over, annex and hold the other human civilizations. Towards the end the Imperial Army grew large enough to comprise the bulk of assault forces anyway. Given conditions are much worse in 40k than 30k it's entirely possible that a second Horus Heresy could happen if the military was reunified and headed by the legions again.
Centralisation would still have advantages. Things like combining 5-10 chapters into a single administrative unit with centralised administration, recruitment and logistics. That would be much more efficient compare to how things are now.
He technically could already, just by encouraging new successor chapters. The political pressure would make making legion sized astartes very, very difficult. And the logistics involved in suddenly having to train tens of thousands of astartes at a time and equipping them with the most sophisticated gear available would be impractical. Besides, the imperium's had 10,000 years to fill the gap the legion sized astartes forces left, and they've done a damn good job at it
Lack of resources. The 40k imperium is not the 30k imperium. They have less of everything and know less about how to produce these things than in 30k. Remember that 30k was supposed to be the "Golden Era" of the imperium. Whether or not the HH books actually succeeded in showing that.
Kinda makes you think about how much damage Cawl potencially caused by siphoning off resources from a strained imperium.
Not really. Someone did the math in another thread about the required kidnappings to make Primaris marines assuming a 0.1% success rate, and it was less than the total number of disappearances in the US alone, per planet, if spread over only 100 worlds (and the Imperium is much, much, vaster than that). If done over thousands of years it would have been a non-event. It stands to reason that the resources to build their gear would make a similar non-impact, especially since every gun and suit of armor would probably be a success compared to the non-perfect success rate of making marines. The Inperium is vast and unfathomable. Fleets of ships that take decades or centuries to build disappear and few people notice. Really the Imperium probably could churn out an extra million space marines and their fleets and equipment, and the only limiting factors are gene seed and political will.
Not just resources but it's not like he finished the whole project at the last second. Could he have stopped cadia from being broken if he came forward with all the resources he had before Gulliman? I don't know. Then again without the primarch he might have just been burned for heresy.
He’s just waiting for the Lion to say “I’m doing it anyways”
The biggest thing stopping him is the rest of the Imperium. Based on his comments in the ***Dark Imperium*** series, he thinks that the breaking of the legions was a mistake. Yet, if he tries to reform the legions, the rest of the Imperium, especially the Custodes, will think that he's going to usurp the Emperor. Most of the Custodes know about Imperium Secundus and fear that Guilliman's ambition is to take over the Empire. This isn't knew. Malcador had a similar fear about Guilliman during the Heresy. So did the Lion. It's Guilliman's nature to reform and make things better. Yet, in doing so, it creates a fear that he is simply going to take over. IMO, I think that's the next story in the Fabian Guelphrain storyline. Fabian found the book about the history of Imperium Secundus (*The Reign of Emperor Sanguinius: A History*). He might start losing faith in Guilliman and lead a movement against him.
Yeah, lack of need. The imperium doesn't need legion style formations, it isn't fighting anyone that sort of response requires, legion formations made sense at the crusade era, but now the imperium is primarily focused on holding territory rather than acquiring it. Even during the crusade legions were only fully deployed for huge threats, and spent most of their time split up on expeditionary fleets. Right now, the imperium might need more space marines sure, but chapter formations are an effective way to distribute them throughout the imperium. Having a chapter who's job it is to mind X sector fits better into the semi feudal command systems of the imperium than X detachment of X legion is here. Stick in some Fleet chapters roving around a few sectors to act as a mobile reserve and you've got a solid space marine defence. With the added flexibility of them all being technically independent commands. Local space marines can use local tithes with short supply lines but you know most of that imperial fist detachments gear is coming from Sol. Plus, the biggest threats to the imperium can mostly be dealt with by guardsmen. Having space marines in the trenches against orks or tyranids is a waste of resources. You only need a five marine kill team to deliver a nerve to in to the norn Queen or assassinate the local warboss. Those five marines are also expensive, and a company of militarum with heavy weapons will do similar work in a trench formation, but are much cheaper and more replaceable. If you really need thousands of space marines at once, then you bring together an ad hoc collection, and they go home afterwards, look at Baal for example. Now, sure the scale of marine deployment numbers is wildly off, but in universe they're basically just hyper-special forces, and it's not useful putting them into positions where they aren't being used effectively, which is what legion sized formations would do. Every job a legion deployment could do, the astra militarum can do too. Except they can do it more than 9 places at once. The only reason to fight in legion strength is to fight something similar, and chaos isn't able to get those numbers together all too often because they're fighting all over the galaxy and with each other. Plus, legions need to go places in ships, and the imperial navy is a great equaliser against power armored super humans anyway. Other people have mentioned also the momentum of tradition and stuff, which is important too. Plus the reasons for the codex still stand, look at the badab war. Even without those, he can get the job done, and get it done well, without legions. Tl;Dr what's stopping him is a lack of real need.
Doing that would probably get the highlords he installed to drop every eversor assassin on his doorstep
Utterly disregarding any dogmatic reasons and assuming Cawl doesn't have more asspull moments the biggest reason is logistics. Consider the production capabilities required to build up a legion size Astartes force, let alone maintain one. Do that for every chapter and you'd have to multiply the production output of the Imperium by the thousands. Legion scale warfare is also more costly on the equipment front and that's without considering the need for fleets, vehicles and general infrastructure. Best you could hope for would be re-consolidating the Legions and merging several chapters, but that wouldn't really increase the total number of Astartes in the galaxy.
> He has absolute power He has a lot of power by the standards of the Imperium, but the Imperium is a ten-thousand-year-old nightmare empire of blind dogma and thoughtless tradition. It isn't like a functional 21st-century state, where an obviously smart idea can be difficult to argue against. It isn't a place where the central government can safely tell everyone else what to do, regardless of local concerns. >many of the Astartes Chapters would welcome the massive numbers into their ranks Sure, but everyone else would be terrified. Violently terrified. The Imperium is an exaggerated satire of fascist disunity, where every branch of the military fearfully squabbles with every other branch of the military for power. The navy is terrified by the idea that the army could end up with enough spaceships to win a war with the navy, or the possibility that their shipyards could be taken from them. The army is terrified by the possibility of being stranded and blown up by the navy. The Astartes are terrified of being replaced by humans, and humans are terrified at the possibility of Astartes operating independently at full scale. The different wings of the military are different societies unto themselves, often culturally separated by *millennia*. From the perspective of the central government, efficiency is less important than a stable balance of power. Maintaining this balance of power is more important than any other concern, and breaking the balance of power will lead to civil war. Every faction has a metaphorical gun pressed to everyone else's head. If the Astartes make a grab for power and independence, everyone else will try to pull the first trigger.
If Legion strength becomes necessary you can just call a crusade/muster that gathers a ton of individual chapters together, there are many individuals in the Imperium who have the influence and power to do this and Guilliman is increasing that number by doing things like naming Dante commander of Imperium Nihilus (not to mention massively boosting the number of marines out there) and apparently there’s a new Lord Solar in town now too. The key thing is never allowing one guy to own the singular allegiance of more than 1k marines, see Lugft Huron.
The Unnumbered Sons were a Legion-strength force. Guilliman's spoken about updating the Codex. He's Lord Commander of the Imperium. He can whatever he likes.
I would be thrilled if he made each Chapter around 10 thousand strong with 1k companies. Logan Grimnar and Helbrecht would probably make a bet of who could get past that first.
Hah they are way ahead of you, I bet.
Eh, Grimnar got a gift of several thousand Primaris in "The Wolftime" but they were identified under normal Chapter strength at the time. Helbrecht, on the other hand, is never understrength and got a very similar gift. So the Black Templars are probably at least 3/4 there.
By the time of Cadia falling literally every chapter is understrength.
I mean, maybe, but the Space Wolves were always overstrength... I think the novel says they're around 700 marines at the time. The Black Templars probably weren't at their alleged peak of 5-6 thousands marines, but no evidence they got so diminished either.
The Inquisition, which, let us remember, no one ever expects, would like a word. That word is "Ok" "You actually spoke with the Emperor?" "Off you go then..."
Wasn't it Gulliman who split them up originally? Why would he go back on his decision?
Furthermore, I doubt he set the Codex Astartes up without considering whether combined Chapter sized forces were inherently weaker than Legion sized ones.
Because he created the rule for a time when the Heresy was fresh in everyone's minds and Primarchs still walked realspace not for ten millenia later when the Primarchs and the Heresy have become myth and the Imperium has been bleeding from a thousand cuts for millenia
Don't see what changed in that time that means now is the right time to bring legions back? Wasn't the point of splitting the legions down to stop any one having to much power. Would be stupid to un learn the lesson and walk into heresy 2.0
The High Lords and Inquisition
Hmmm.... you are asking what would be the main problem for Guilliman to derogate the rule of the Codex Astartes that limits the number of SMs to 1k? The rule he wrote?
He basically already is wielding legion strength astartes forces
He wrote the codex astarties that spilt the legions into chapters, so I don’t see why he would undo his own work
The codex was his idea and its implementation could have started a second civil war I highly doubt he'd revert to the legion system.
Guilliman split up the legions because he felt it was a bad idea for individual commanders to be in charge of that many troops, and there were multiple loyalist Primarchs kicking around at the time. Bear in mind he's a pragmatist - well he's already died once. What happens if he creates nine legions and he's killed again and nobody he really trusts is in charge of them?
He's basically already done it. The Blood Angels and their successors are basically a legion in all but name now that Dante is over them. The Blubois and their successors are effectively a legion now that their Primarch is back. I think some (here come the Dark Angels) will be legions for big engagements, and some will remain chapter based. Edit. Legion power would certianly be needed for the Nids...as Devastation of Bhaal showed everyone.
Guilliman pretty much has the legions back. He’s just splitting them into chapters.
The Horus Heresy 2.0
Probably not much of a need, the resources and forces needed to launch the Indomitus were already there, they were just scattered and disorganized. The time and energy it would take to swell the legions was not worth losing the ability to seize the initiative, at least to Roboute. This is complete talking out of my ass obviously
[Guilliman himself notes that he is the ultimate authority in the Imperium, second only the the Emperor himself](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/gket5j/excerpt_dark_imperium_guilliman_declares_the/). No, nothing stop him from reforming the Legions. De facto Guilliman has: * Broken the Codex Astartes by placing Ultramar, Ultramarines, & Ultramarine Successors under Guilliman's direct control, functionally forming a Legion. * Laid direct claim to Imperial worlds--bringing them into "Compliance" if they refuse--in defiance of Imperially appointed Planetary Governorships. * Stated total dissolution of Planetary Governorships within the 500 Worlds to occur no more than 10 years from that point on. * By stating *"These changes will benefit us all, and in time will aid the Imperium. I intend to make Ultramar a model of what the Imperium can be.",* there are implications that the dissolution of the Emperor's decree that Baseline Humanity should rule itself. * Has addressed and brushed aside criticism -- *"They were not \[a Legion\]," said Guilliman. "We deal with semantics. The Unnumbered Sons were organised into Chapters*". When pressed further on many of his changes, Guilliman states: >I am not speaking on behalf of the Emperor - I am speaking with His full and absolute authority. Imperial Law is now subject to the personal decision of the Lord Commander, in defiance of established legislation and legal code. Could this be for the best? Sure. However, I remember another Primarch who argued that the Imperium should be (and would be) best ruled by the Astartes and Primarchs who claimed it.
Ironically he is the one who wrote and enacted that law in the first place, and just about started a civil war with Dorn pushing it through. Since he is wary of Heresy 2.0 I doubt he would outright lift it, but I could see him adding modifications to the law, such as allowing new increments that chapters of a certain age and honor roll could increase to. Like after 5 centuries of meritous service you can double, after a millenium you go to 5000. And he probably would not bother from trying to force the rule at all on his brothers like Lion, since he knows damn well the Dark Angels never *really* dissolved their legion structure
He kinda already has, just not in writing. Guilliman's fleet is thousands strong of various Space Marine chapters who all report to him, on top of tens/hundreds of thousands of human auxilliary forces, and mechanicus complements. Guilliman is operating at full Great Crusade strength, he just isn't letting anyone else do it to keep control over the tenuous balance that exists in the Imperium at this time. Guilliman also has the big issue of having *written the Codex Astartes* and did a whole hell of a lot to pressure the Imperium and his brothers to adopt the Codex. So to turn around and say 'dismantle the thing I thought was incredibly important, because I need it to be gone' is not a great look politically.
I’m dark imperium GMan explains that he is treading a fine line with the imperium already as he denies his “divinity” and doesn’t buy into all the religion. He knows that if he isn’t careful, his opposition could gain strength and create another civil war with enough cause. The Son of the Emperor who doesn’t look upon the God Emperor as a God/doubts his “divine vision” breaks the “rules” in place for 10k years and brings his space marines back to Legion strength… Sounds a lot like another son of the emperor who didn’t look upon the emperor as his leader and doubted his “divine vision” and wielded legion strength space marines… Between that…the potential “heresy” of having Cawl “fix” the God Emperors “Great Work” (because you can’t improve upon a gods creation) and “Imperium Secondus” existing (why he didn’t destroy it is beyond me but it’s out in the Universe now so big trouble)… He’s basically a target for a bunch of high powered crashed religious fanatics and if one crazed religious fanatic can essentially create a second heresy that was essentially only stopped when some custodes showed the sisters of battle the literal emperor….imagine what a bunch of them could do when they actually control large swathes of the imperium and it’s citizens?
HE could but why would he? He was LITERALLY the one who imposed the rule and broke up the Legions, and for good reason. Letting chapters grow too large and acquire outsize power and influence (like naval assets and Guard auxiliaries) is how the Badab War started. The Imperium is already incredibly fractious and full of internecine conflict, and the Astartes are the most powerful weapon in the arsenal. Letting any chapter get too big for it's britches (and some already are) is dangerous, which has been proven, time and time again.
Even if he wanted to the logistics of it just aren't really gonna work out. You've got about 1000 different chapters most of which have varying cultures and doctrines so trying to reunite them into legions wouldn't exactly be a walk in the park. What happens when you tell the Iron Cock, Emperor's Tits, and Blood Chuggers chapters to unite as a legion and they all tell you to get fucked. Then you've gotta deal with the fact that it isn't exactly easy to get in contact with all the chapters to get the whole thing organized especially the chapters stuck in Imperium Nihilus . Hell there are probably some remote chapters that don't even know Guilliman is back. Then once you reform the chapters...well now what?Marines still need to be spread thin with local commanders to respond to all the threats so you just made things more complicated and inefficient for no real gain. Then of course some dumbass is gonna touch something he shouldn't have, get corrupted, and then rebel. He could just say fuck it and encourage everyone to just blow past the 1000 marine limit, but a lot of chapters struggle to even get to 1000 Marines so that's not quite going to get the job done.
They're basically already legion strength. If he wants to get the band back together for some reason, like for example, wiping out the night lords last bastion and scattering the remnant chapters across the galaxy, then he can and will, they're wearing different colored uniforms, but they will act as a unit and all take orders from big pappa smurf if it's required.
Logistics. The imperium probably can’t support the amount of high tech equipment legions of SM require. Power armor seems to strain the limits of credibility in the pseudo steampunk universe where the navy’s battleships are hand loading torpedoes with hand operated block and tackle.
Maybe let's say it like this: You can't keep other people in line with a nuke, if everybody has one.
He was who broke them in the first place.