Legion Appearance
The Alpha Legion wear many skins and don many guises in the prosecution of their covert agendas, but when the time to land the killing blow is nigh, they go to war in the colours of their Primarch Alpharius.

It is not unusual for the Legion's warriors to incorporate designs based on the scales of serpents into their battle plate, or even to have similar icons tattooed under their skin, visible only when the wearer wishes them to be. Ostentation is rare, giving more of a sense of unity to their armies than is common in other Chaos Space Marine forces.

Legion Colours
The Alpha Legion, unlike many of the Traitor Legions, maintained the same basic colour scheme for their Power Armour -- azure blue, silver and green -- even after their fall to Chaos. This was an outward testament to the fact the Alpha Legion has -- in spirit if not in body -- remained much the same since its creation. Alpha Legion Sergeants often had green helmets with a blue stripe down the centre.

The typical livery of an Alpha Legionary is some combination of sea blue and emerald green. This is sometimes worn in subtle contrast, half obscured by the dust of conquest; at other times it is polished to a violently clashing high sheen, the better to draw the eye of the enemy so that the greater work might pass unseen.

The scaly cloaks worn by the operatives of the Alpha Legion are highly sought after -- should a Legionary fall, one of his brothers will take up the mantle in his place, donning it on behalf of the Legion itself. Often, these are worn not by Champions, but by the least favoured or experienced of a warband -- such obvious signs of status attract the sniper's bullet, and the Alpha Legion regard such linear thinking with contempt.

The Colours of Deceit
AL Tact Markings Heraldry
Pre-Heresy Alpha Legion Tactical Markings and Heraldry
The question of the Alpha Legion's livery and heraldry of arms is also a matter of some contention in the study of this Traitor Legion's history. It is the case that over the centuries-long conflict of the Great Crusade, all of the grey-clad Legions that first departed Terra changed their appearance to some degree -- some very dramatically so -- as the consequences of the long war and campaigning took their toll, and most tellingly when they were reunited with their primarchs.

It is also the case that most uniformity or conformity of livery and appearance proved impossible, even for a Legion not as stratified and fractured as perhaps the Ultramarines or the Iron Warriors, given that an armed force such as a Space Marine Legion numbered in the tens of thousands and was very scattered across the vast distances of the interstellar void.

These facts, however, do not account for the wide variance displayed by the Alpha Legion, and instead it is likely that a more deliberate policy of misdirection and secrecy played its part. Variously and across multiple time periods, the Alpha Legion has been witnessed in liveries of pale grey, gleaming steel, veridian, dull bronze, sable, indigo, amaranth and azure blue -- both in main and combination.

It has been variously recorded as displaying Principia Belicosa standardised rank and unit signifiers, elaborate stylised reptilian iconography of unknown meaning, and the complex logos-teknika forms favoured by the Emperor-shattered Panpacific Empire on Ancient Terra before Unification. It has also gone into battle without emblems or markings of any kind; a faceless, anonymous army of killers without distinction or division in its ranks.

If any deeper meaning is held by these changes and masquerades beyond their use to confuse the enemy and confound those who would study the XXth Legion and know its ways, one of the most outlandish and disturbing explanations is that not even the Alpha Legion itself knew its true shape and forms.

This theory, postulated since the Horus Heresy, contends that only Alpharius knew the main extant of his Legion and its domain, its strength and its reach, and perhaps then even he knew it only imperfectly. By this token the Alpha Legion had become unknowable, a self-sustaining, self-replicating force, a weapon that had transcended the flesh of the Legionaries that made it up and the hand that wielded it.

It would be a force whose limits and extent would forever be unknown, even unto itself, and therefore ultimately unstoppable as no enemy or influence could ever hope to fully infiltrate or overcome it from within.

It was and is indeed the case, that even before the Horus Heresy, entire generations of Alpha Legion warriors could have been trained, fought and died in ignorance of their own Legion's wider operations, purposes and goals. Entire Expeditionary Fleets could have operated never knowing the existence of mirror images of themselves, each believing that they were the only Alpha Legion bearing the name. The implications of such a colossal deceit are staggering if true.

HH: Extermination is quite clear that the Alpha Legion is split between two halves. The half that is portrayed in Legion, who disguise themselves as other legions, sneak around, and call themselves Alpharius. And the half that make heavy use of traditional tactics, heraldry and markings, all of which can be changed at a moment's notice. The point is to feed as much information to the enemy and ensure that every bit of it is false when the battle arrives.The Alpha Legion made heavy use of the Greek alphabet as part of their heraldry. Older legionnaires also used the chained Alpha-omega combined symbol, though this was most likely moved around as it suited needs. For the most part, any symbol that could be passed off as seemingly meaningful would've been used by the Alpha Legion add a way of confusing the enemy. War cries, coats of arms, color schemes, all of which could be changed on the fly, and not just to something used by another Legion.