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'Sup Dakka! Got some questions for ya...

Ideally I'd like to know where I can get the 'offishul' background material on the following questions if, indeed, such information exists. This is all research for some HH fluff I'm working on.

1. How many Expedition Fleets embarked upon the Great Crusade to reunite humanity?
2. Did each and every Expedition have to have astartes present, or were there fleets going around with purely Imperial Army personnel?
3. What was the minumum composition of an Expedition Fleet? Was there a minimum number of ships or requisite vessels? Were there smaller Expeditions with only a handful of ships?

Well, there're some questions to get you started. Take your pick which one(s) to answer - there's more to come!

Cheers

James

1. According to Horus Rising (via Lexicanum):
In the 203rd year of the Great Crusade, War Council logs indicated that there were:
4,287 expedition fleets engaged in active exploration
372 expedition fleets engaged in refit and repair
60,000 (approx.) detached compliance groups involved in occupation and colonization.

2. No, most of those written about have Space Marines in because Space Marines are what sells, but the 670th Expeditionary Fleet in Legion had no integral Astartes contingent and its Lord Commander was stated to have the 'finest martial records of any commander in the Great Crusade' (so unlikely to have been a 'second-line' or auxiliary fleet)

3. No idea.

SerQuintus already gave good replies to 1 and 2, so ill stick to 3.
The size of the expedition fleets varied by quite an amount. The minimum should be around a force which is able to defend itself and do easy compliances, so you could have a small fleet. The largest expeditions were those of the primarchs, with loads of additional forces attached to them like titans and the Imperial army . From the HH series its indicated that fleets can be quite small though and call upon each other if they find a tough nut to crack. A good example of this on the world Murder. A small force of Blood Angels 100-200 is lost on the world and othe expedition fleets arrive to help, ending up in the arrival of Fulgrim, Horus and Sanguinius on one planet. So a fleet could be pretty small if there were larger support elements nearby that could easily be called upon.

Ahh I forgot about Murder:
"The 140th Expedition was a small, compact force of eighteen carriers, mass conveyances and escorts supporting the noble battle-barge Misericord. Its martial composition was three companies of Blood Angels under Captain Frome, and four thousand men of the Imperial army, with allied armour, but no Mechanicum force."

The size of the Blood Angel companies wasn't covered I dont think, however IIRC the same book puts Luna Wolves at something like 300 marines per company.

SerQuintus wrote:
Ahh I forgot about Murder:
"The 140th Expedition was a small, compact force of eighteen carriers, mass conveyances and escorts supporting the noble battle-barge Misericord. Its martial composition was three companies of Blood Angels under Captain Frome, and four thousand men of the Imperial army, with allied armour, but no Mechanicum force."

The size of the Blood Angel companies wasn't covered I dont think, however IIRC the same book puts Luna Wolves at something like 300 marines per company.

Yeah I forgot that company sizes varied a lot during the HH times. I figured about 3 companies of 100, but on a small expedition that is probably not refilled a lot so 100-200 active marines. But I think thats about as small as they can get, since those 4000 men of the army didnt really contribute to the fighting.

SerQuintus and Disciple of Fate, thanks so much for those slices of knowledge - they're most useful and really appreciated! I need this stuff for a HH novel I'm attempting to write (which is here if anyone's interested in a read and giving some crit: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/528204.page).

I do have some further questions:

4. Does anyone know where I can find a detailed list of all the major expeditions? I checked the Lexicanum list and, whilst useful, it isn't very long and missing a fair bit of detail. Not sure if one exists on da interweb or maybe in a GW/FW book somewhere...

5. If a small non-Astartes fleet, commanded by an admiral of the Imperial Navy, is laying siege to a world but it's a real balls up (the admiral isn't doing a very good job and has taken heavy losses), if a squadron of Astartes vessels (say, three strike cruisers and a handful of escorts) arrives to sort out the mess, can the Astartes captain in charge take overall command from the human admiral? Would the Astartes captain have this level of authority, or would he only have it if previously given to him by his primarch?

Sorry, question 5 is a bit of a long one!

Cheers

James

4. Lexicanum is as good as you're likely to get.

5. I don't think a marine that low on the totem pole would be operating autonomously, so if he did turn up to sort things out it'd be because he was ordered to - so his authority would come from his superiors.

Thanks again, SerQuintus!

More questions:

6. Who governs a forge world? Is it an adept or a regular Imperial governor?

And a gaming question:

7. Is there any Mechanicum codex in the pipeline? If not, are there any fandexes out there? If so, then links please!

Cheers

6. An Adept, Forge Worlds are totally under AdMech control - generally speaking that's all that separates Hive Worlds from Forge Worlds.

7. Can't speak for fan dex's. The closest to an official list is a few units in Forge World's Betrayal book - they'll likely get more in later books but its anyone's guess if they'll get a full army.

SerQuintus wrote:
6. An Adept, Forge Worlds are totally under AdMech control - generally speaking that's all that separates Hive Worlds from Forge Worlds.

Did this still hold true back in the 31st millennium? I know the Emperor kinda promised the Mechanicum that, if they joined with Terra, they would get loads of nice STC tech on worlds where it was (re)discovered. But didn't certain adepts - including of course the Fabricator General on Mars - get fed up with how the Emperor seemed to be going back on his word?

Just wondered if this included Imperial officials sticking their noses into Mechanicum business on various forge worlds across the galaxy...