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 buddha wrote:

Col. Dash wrote:
Black Legion wavered after the Heresy of almost being destroyed as they threw their lot in with any chaos god that would take them and more and more of them got possessed and the new sponsor really didn't like the possessed from the old sponsor. Old fluff, might have been retconned but I tend to stick with older information rather than switch to new.

Not to mention all four Istvaan legions lost about a third of their fighting power purging the loyalists, and then the massive casualties they took when the punishment force arrived before they retreated to the drop site massacre. Also the other legions kicked their butts across the Eye for running away and causing the defeat at Terra.

Not to completely derail the thread but the amount of traitor HH casualties always bothered me. Though it varied from legion to legion we know that as many as half of some of the traitor legions remained loyal and had to be culled. After Istvann III and V which were super casualty driven fights thanks to everyone from Saul Tarvitz to Corax how much of an average traitor legion like the world eaters or sons of hours could have be left to campaign to terra?

This is actually a really good point. Apparently a third of the Death Guard remained loyal. Assuming a similar number in other legions (which is lousy maths, but it'll work) I'm not sure Istvann III would have been enough to get them all.
Unless a fair few members of the loyalist legions also turned traitor so as to balance the numbers out. We know a lot of Dark Angels went rogue, and I have always imagined that, say, a traitor company of Imperial Fists (or whatever legion) would balance out the loyalist Death Guard (or whatever legion) company.

I know the 4th book which I haven't read listed that there were traitors from all the loyalist legions which switched to Horus's side. I am pretty sure they left the number vague so they do not have to make corrections later on. Likely these loyalist traitors would have joined with the Black Legion since they were siding with Horus's plan, and that would have buffed their numbers a bit from the ass kicking they had already received.

My guess is that the four original traitor legions would be down to 45% or so of their pre-heresy starting strength before you add in back up from loyalist traitors, which I cant imagine would add more than 5% to that number.

This would have left the other four Traitor Legions in a pretty good position troop wise by comparison. This doesn't take into account loyalist IWs, or the schism in Alpha Legion which I have only heard a little of. I cant imagine there were a lot of night Lord loyalists, they were already borderline traitor as a legion before the heresy and mad as a whole that they were going to be punished by grand dad for doing what he created them to do in the first place and I think as a whole they were incredibly loyal to their primarch above all else.

I have also not heard anything about loyalist Word Bearers and I doubt that many of them would have switched sides since their legion was the one who started it in the first place. I don't know much about the WB though so I could be very wrong on that one.

Col. Dash wrote:
I know the 4th book which I haven't read listed that there were traitors from all the loyalist legions which switched to Horus's side. I am pretty sure they left the number vague so they do not have to make corrections later on. Likely these loyalist traitors would have joined with the Black Legion since they were siding with Horus's plan, and that would have buffed their numbers a bit from the ass kicking they had already received.

My guess is that the four original traitor legions would be down to 45% or so of their pre-heresy starting strength before you add in back up from loyalist traitors, which I cant imagine would add more than 5% to that number.

This would have left the other four Traitor Legions in a pretty good position troop wise by comparison. This doesn't take into account loyalist IWs, or the schism in Alpha Legion which I have only heard a little of. I cant imagine there were a lot of night Lord loyalists, they were already borderline traitor as a legion before the heresy and mad as a whole that they were going to be punished by grand dad for doing what he created them to do in the first place and I think as a whole they were incredibly loyal to their primarch above all else.

I have also not heard anything about loyalist Word Bearers and I doubt that many of them would have switched sides since their legion was the one who started it in the first place. I don't know much about the WB though so I could be very wrong on that one.

Well in first heretick, we know that there are Word Bearers that were still loyal. Particularly those Marines from Terra. However, Lorgar slowly purged those loyalists over time as opposed to one big battle. He did this long before joining Horus.