Could the Legions be reconstituted?

[Mr Mystery]

Evening all.

Just a random question that popped into my noggin.

If the Imperium wanted to, for whatever reason, do you think the Legions of old could be reconstituted in terms of sheer numbers?

[daboarder]

no,

1) The imperium barely has the tech to maintain the space marines/ gene seed it has and what it does have is so locked up in ritual its not funny

2) the imperium does not have the unified supply needed to maintain the legions anymore

3) a good chunk of the current space marine chapters have no idea who their Primarch is, they are far to independent to be formed into a legion again.

[40kGamer]

Evening all.

Just a random question that popped into my noggin.

If the Imperium wanted to, for whatever reason, do you think the Legions of old could be reconstituted in terms of sheer numbers?

Hmmm. After the Heresy we had 9 loyal legions. 40k fluff tags marines at ~1000 active chapters with ~1000 marines on the average. So 1,000,000 marines divided across 9 legions would yield an average of ~111k marines per legion. Of course it wouldn't shake out that way as the Ultramarines are the bulk of modern gene stock. But I would have to say absolutely.

[Wolfshade]

In the Blood Angels omnibus Dante summons all (or at least a big chunk) of successor chapters to Baal to and they all work together in a legion-esque kind of way. Though while wrapped in common purpose each maintains their autonomy and production of materiel. In a way it seems to be similar way to the way that the different legion elements worked in the great crusade with companies (and groups their of) would be responsible for persecuting their war but had to look after their own supplies.

[YorkNecromancer]

Someone's attempt would certainly make for an interesting story...

It's obviously not impossible; you'd just have to use Plot Devices that were plausible. So: where's the gene seed production facility, and why has it never been heard of before? Which Forge Worlds have agreed to supply the munitions and materiel and why? Which Chapter is it, how are they reclaiming their Successors, and who is in charge of negotiating all the treaties?

I think that could actually make a really interesting 40K roleplay game; have the players as, say, the High Council of the Ultramarines (because they seem like a fairly reasonable choice). If we imagine that Calgar has been mortally wounded, and is worried about Abaddon's 13th Black Crusade, so he gives the players Carte Blanche mandate to reconfigure the chapter into a Legion. One of the players is the new Chapter Master, the other are Captains, and the whole game, rather than being one of simple 'fight baddies' becomes one of politics and resource management - not to mention stealth and secrecy, because Heresy.

I think that'd be a good game. Especially if it's set up so that when the players succeed, the Legion turns out to be too big and unwieldy for it to be of any use, and they discover that there were practical reasons why Guilliman split the Legions up.

The key would be giving the players challenges that they could not achieve through sheer might; sure, they're ungodly powerful, but they have to sit at the table and persuade those AdMech that it's in the techpriest's best interests to supply 20,000 suits of power armour. You could also make a big deal of it if you introduced a morality system like Vampire: The Masquerade's: basically, the more the players throw their weight around, use intimidation and violence to resolve the issues, the more their men follow their lead... and the further into Khorne-worship the chapter slips.

Penalise them for taking the usual 'We'll just get bigger guns and that'll solve this' route.

I'd play that game.

[Denzark]

I've got to respectfully disagree with DAB's comment on supply. Logistically the problems of supplying materiel and geneseed to 1000 loyal chapters spread across the galaxy is far more difficult than massing this stuff for a centralised organisation. There would be massive benefits of economy of scale. Also, supplying legions during the Crusade was possible, but the stagnant galaxy has more compliant planets that would contribute.

In terms of growth, lets assume MM's proposition - that the Imperium 'wanted to': means the High Lords agree to do this, and overturn the proscription of legion sized forces. Then you've got the difficulties of bringing disparate chapters to heel, and assigning them to a legion. Not knowing your primogenitor is not a problem - because if terran and non-terran marines were brought together in Legions during the crusades, then re-aligned chapters in a 'new' legion could cope.

I think the biggest problem is that there is no such thing as a 'disengaged' chapter, they are all somewhat busy. So what happens when you try and withdraw these chapters to a legion massing point?

Also you would need to turn over the proscription of fleet/army being separate - which was a direct result of the heresy - to allow forces freedom of manoeuvre to react to the gaps the marines leave when massing in legions.

I think it could be done, yeah, but would probably take them several centuries, and then could only be done 1 legion at a time. Say, pull back a rump cadre of 10-15 chapters back to Ultramar and form them together and expand from there. Smaller than a 100k+ crusade legion, but a legion nonetheless.

Also, bear in mind that the Wolves never split down too far, so their numbers could already be legion strength.

[daboarder]

I've got to respectfully disagree with DAB's comment on supply. Logistically the problems of supplying materiel and geneseed to 1000 loyal chapters spread across the galaxy is far more difficult than massing this stuff for a centralised organisation. There would be massive benefits of economy of scale. Also, supplying legions during the Crusade was possible, but the stagnant galaxy has more compliant planets that would contribute.

yes but the imperium isn't supplying each of those chapters as a whole, each chapter is more like its own fief, responsible for its own supplies with its own pacts and agreements to different forge worlds and planets to get what it needs. For a legion to exist the imperium as a whole would need a unified supply source otherwise the legion would simply drain ever small fraction of support it came across.

even the black templar (closest to legion strength) operate as independent crusades, with each crusade being largely responsible for itself.

do agree with the rest of what you said though, the very structure of the imperium as a compartmentalised empire prevents it (which was the whole point)


Consider this, Armageddon, each Tyrannic War, The 13th, . These are all conflicts that involved legion sized forces (if not legion coherency) and they have completely strangled the support available to the various segmentums. each of the conflicts has the serious potential to completely drain the Imperium of all the men and material it can spare.
If they'd all canonically happened at once then the Imperium would be dead.

[Asymmetrical Xeno]

Wouldn't the Unforgiven reform into a legion? If any chapters, I'd imagine it would be them.

[WaywardSon5]

It may be the wishful thinking of an old Black Templars player, but I've always imagined the Templars actually have the numbers already, just scattered across the galaxy in hundreds or thousands of smaller crusade fleets. I have no fluff to back it up, just the hints in their codex that there's much more to the chapter than most suspect.