[40K]Great Crusade question

[wautd]

Reading trough the Horus Heresy novels, I'm surprised the Space Marine legions are so tiny (a couple of ten thousand marines at most?). They may be good, but even they can conquer only one or two planets at a time (sometimes taking months to do so). Over a period of only 200 years, that must be a couple of 100 planets which is an insignificant number in a galaxy of millions. Is this a case of writers minimalism or just the Imperial Army doing 99.9999% of the work while Space Marines get all the cred?

[evilsoup]

Bear in mind that a single Space Marine dropped on a planet is expected to be able to convert or kill everything there. SMs are incredibly badass.

I suspect that they used mongol tactics - smash everything, if a planet is too hard and is slowing the momentum kill them all. The Imperial Army would come in and act as a garrison - iirc, that is how the army came into being (greatful garrison troops wanted to help out the SMs).

[Juubi Karakuchi]

The situation varies based on a number of factors.

The size of the Legions varied significantly. The second-largest Legion is revealed to have been the Word Bearers, at 100,000 Marines, the largest being the Ultramarines, whose numbers included at least one of the two unnamed Legions. The Word Bearers' numbers are in part due to their pre-corruption policies, which involved gradually converting planets to the worship of the Emperor, as opposed to trashing the place and leaving the occupation forces to pick up the pieces. The smallest Legion was probably the Thousand Sons, who made up for it with their psychic powers.

The timescale of a 'compliance' depends largely on the planet or polity involved. Planets with limited military capability (due to population, technology, or whatever) could be dealt with in a matter of days. Many planets surrendered without a fight, or even welcomed the coming of the Imperium (for a variety of possible reasons). The ones that took months or years tended to be well-developed systems such as Laeran (Fulgrim) and the 'Imperium' (Horus Rising), and multi-system star empires such as the Ark Reach Cluster (A Thousand Sons).

As for tactics, the term 'speartip' is repeatedly used to describe the role of the Astartes. In other words, they knock holes in the proverbial wall through which the Imperial Army can pour. Considering what a hundred or so Astartes are shown to be capable of in the regular 40k timeline, this is not to be sneezed at.

[Serafina]

They generally destroyed the largest enemy military formations and/or their leadership, which took only a few weeks in the instances we saw in the novels - and that was against very advanced enemies. After that they drop Guardsmen on the planet to garrison it and handle any later uprisings.
Add relatively short transition times due to a calm warp (which gets worse over the course of the novels) and you can easily get one system per two months, or six in a year.

If we assume five fleets per legion, that's 30 systems per year and legion - 600 per year for the entire crusade. Since the Crusade lasted at least 200 years (that's about where the novels start), we get 120000 conquered systems.
That leaves out systems which surrender or have negligible military forces.

However, we know that there were more than 4000 primary expedition fleets when the first novel starts. So the above should be considered a lower limit - it's likely that plenty of these fleets were created later and consisted of Guardsmen, Mechanicus troops and only small amounts of Marines (maybe single squads).

[Imperial Overlord]

It's important to remember that and expeditionary fleet didn't necessarily consist of a full legion and even the ones that did were usually engaged in multiple campaigns simultaneously. A squadron of warships, several thousand marines, some Imperial Army regiments, and and Admech support is enough to smash all but the toughest of targets. Some of the Heresy era short stories show guys with rank roughly equal to a Chapter Master in charge of expeditions.

In addition, yes some of the expeditionary fleets didn't include Marines. The one in Legion is purely Imperial Army and Admech before it runs into a nut it can't crack and requests reinforcements, which arrive in the form of the Alpha Legion.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Question, I've not read many of the Heresy novels but- how willing were most of the worlds contacted by the Imperium to be reintegrated into some kind of human society, even the one that they actually got?

From the very old fluff which I remember best, the age of strife was a drastic and traumatic experience for most of the human worlds- in fact, do we really know anything about the politics and societies of the Golden Age of Technology? For many worlds, I would expect the arrival of Imperial forces to be the ending of the dark times, and there to be at least some useful level of willingness to build on.

There has to have been, to some degree- the crusade has to have fed on itself to spread as far and as fast as it did, worlds reclaimed in the first wave have to have provided the troops to take the worlds of the second and so on, snowballing outwards; Imperial Earth is mighty, but not that mighty.

There would have been major campaigns against the corrupted, the xenos and the unwilling of course, no denying that, but to retake such a slice of the galaxy in that time, I do think an accelerating process of at least as much, probably more, integration than conquest fits.

[Stravo]

From what I've gathered the expeditionary fleets were comprised of the particular legions of space marines - most of the time they were spread out over several fleets so you may have the Space Wolves split into 3 different fleets since it is noted when the Space Wolf Legion is gathered for its assault on Prospero it was auspicious as it was one of the only times the entire Legion was gathered in one fleet. On top of that the Space Marines were only the Tip of the Spear of any fleet and the Imperial Guard (or the precursors better to say) made up the vast majority of the fleet. When they assaulted a world it seems to me that the Marines concentrated on assaulting and destroying the highest profile targets and the most dangerous. The Imperial Army handled the rest of the planet.

Additionally an assault by Space Marines is often so overpowering and so devastating that it can demoralize the planet's defenders to the point where they just give up especially when the Marines usually go for decapitating strikes against the leadership during these assaults.

Not to mention there were definitely fleets that did not contain Space Marine elements at all. There are at least two that come to mind - in the novel "Legion" the Alpha Legion is actually called in to support a fleet that has no Space Marine elements trying to take a world and
in "Prospero Burns" a campaign against a world that was almost as high tech as the Imperium a fleet again lacking Space Marine elements calls on the Space Wolves to help them clear the orbital defenses of the planet to allow the Imperial Army to land and conduct the pacification. Strong points on the planet are reserved for the Wolves.

Most worlds are catalogued by the AdMech and they make observations to gauge the overall strength of a planet or empire well in advance of any contact by the Imperium. In terms of how planets were communicated with and how the choices were made to bring them into compliance several of the novels do mention diplomatic overtures made initially to bring them peacefully into the Imperium and it does indeed happen occasionally. The problem is that no world is allowed to actually say no. Once a world refuses peaceful integration that's when the compliance planning begins and they are next visited by an expeditionary fleet.

However there are definitely instances where the Crusade has been practical in how it handles compliance. In "Fulgrim" they actually estimate that one world in particular is so advanced that it will take an expeditionary fleet something like 10 years to pacify it and so they instead mark it as a Protectorate of the Imperium to avoid the hassle. Fulgrim is offended by this and launches an assault anyway to prove that his perfect warriors can bring the world to compliance and he does accomplish this at a staggering cost to his Legion - and ultimately leads to his fall to Chaos. In another example Horus himself opens negotiations with a highly advanced culture known as the Iterix (sp?) that ends badly but it shows that the Crusade knew when they were facing something that would bog them down. They were careful about how they approached compliance leaving the more advanced worlds and empires for later (usually).

[lordofchange13]

The legions did not need to be very large. only a few dozen to a hundred ever have to be devoted to any one planey, and the majority of planet conquering only last a few weeks.

[Ahriman238]

Also, recall that Space Marines are the ones who do impossible missions, who break into invincible fortresses, who break vast alien empires. Most expedition fleets will just carry Imperial Army troops, maybe a Titan Legion, and there were over two thousand expedition fleets.
Also, according at least to "the Lion's Call" a fleet spent most of it's time just seeking out new worlds and human civilizations, starmaps from before the Age of Strife being fragmentary and out-of-date. In that same story two thousand Astartes expected to acheive compliance on a modern-earth equivalent civilization in a week, while some compliances are mentioned as taking a decade or more, so there's really no way to tell from time x fleet numbers how many worlds are in the Imperium.

Question, I've not read many of the Heresy novels but- how willing were most of the worlds contacted by the Imperium to be reintegrated into some kind of human society, even the one that they actually got?

TYPICAL FIRST CONTACT
I: Brothers! The long darkness of Old Night is passed! You are not alone anymore! Come and join the Imperium of Man, under the Emperor's guidance you shall acheive greatness!
N: Hey, that's great! There's other people amongst the stars! Umm, can we talk about this 'Imperium' and 'Emperor' thing? We've got a pretty good thing going here, shame to throw it away without knowing what we're getting. Do your laws-
I: They refuse compliance and insult the Emperor! FOR THE EMPRAH! SHPESS MARINEEEES!

[Connor MacLeod]

Legions IIRC originated around 2nd edition. Back in 1st they were still all Chapters. someone like andrewgpaul can probably provide a more concerete answer on that though. Anyhow, Legion sizes have aried. Some listed them as only 10,000, or "tens of thousands", whilst other more recent ones went higher. Horus-Heresy: Collected visions (which seems to be a sort of blueprint for the HH series as a whole) mentioned legions were much larger - at least 100,000 as a minimum IIRC.

The authors, as a rule, tend to follow their own knowledge/inclinations. Which means you can get mentions of the 10,000 figure, or 100,000 or somewhere in between.

[Imperial Overlord]

Legions IIRC originated around 2nd edition. Back in 1st they were still all Chapters. someone like andrewgpaul can probably provide a more concerete answer on that though. Anyhow, Legion sizes have aried. Some listed them as only 10,000, or "tens of thousands", whilst other more recent ones went higher. Horus-Heresy: Collected visions (which seems to be a sort of blueprint for the HH series as a whole) mentioned legions were much larger - at least 100,000 as a minimum IIRC.

The authors, as a rule, tend to follow their own knowledge/inclinations. Which means you can get mentions of the 10,000 figure, or 100,000 or somewhere in between.

Actually they predate 2nd Edition. They get discussed in some detail in the Realms of Chaos books, where they introduced the Traitor Legion Army Lists for 1st Edition.

[andrewgpaul]

Legions IIRC originated around 2nd edition. Back in 1st they were still all Chapters. someone like andrewgpaul can probably provide a more concerete answer on that though. Anyhow, Legion sizes have aried. Some listed them as only 10,000, or "tens of thousands", whilst other more recent ones went higher. Horus-Heresy: Collected visions (which seems to be a sort of blueprint for the HH series as a whole) mentioned legions were much larger - at least 100,000 as a minimum IIRC.

The authors, as a rule, tend to follow their own knowledge/inclinations. Which means you can get mentions of the 10,000 figure, or 100,000 or somewhere in between.

Oh, god, am I becoming the "hoary old 40K" guru?

The term "Legion" was first applied to all Crusade-Era Marines in 2nd edition (in 1st, only the Chaos Marines were "traitor legionaries"), but while they were called Chapters, they were still the same sort of size as the Legions are depicted as being now.

As for the Ultramarines being partly composed of one of the unnamed Legions, IIRC that's an accusation by a Word Bearer, made when the Ultramarines are sent to bring the Word Bearers primarch back to answer to the Emperor. It might be true, or it might just be slander.

[Lonestar]

IIRC one of the HH short story books mentioned a DA task force conquering a planet with late 20th/early 21st century tech. The DA force commander felt that 2000 or so battle brothers would be all that is needed to end organized resistance on the. No doubt they intended for the Imperial Army to do the fun stuff of counter insurgency and taking out the weaker formations left in the field.