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Can anyone tell that how many fallen has been captured ? Or how many are there , the dark angels codex never tell how many are there . Or you all can just give your estimates

Estimate had about half the legion turning.

So at the very, very least, 5,000 turned with 10,000 being a lower number of legion. It was said they were moderate in number, with the lowest being Thousand Sons at 10,000. So somewhere above that at least.

After the Horus Heresy books from Black Library and Forgeworld the baseline numbers for legions were upped to 100K with variety above or below. However, according to the story that we know, it was just the DA on Caliban who rebelled so we don't know how much of the legion was on Caliban at the time. It could be a thousand, tens or thousands, or 10, who knows.

Raven guard are explicitly stated as the smallest legion now (before istvaan) so thousand sons are at least 80,000+ (the size of the smallest legion) the largest being ultramarines (estimated at around 4-500k), blood angels were the third largest after word bearers and the angels at signus were apparently around 180 to 190k ish, so dark angels I would put around the middle ground and say (guess) about 125-50k marines, half the legion did not fall at caliban, only the marines that luthor commanded and the recruits he made (unbooded full Marines), these are an unknown number of marines, but if the old fluff is believed then around 50-75k rebelled, this cannot be the case as the dark angels clearly took losses in the thramas crusade and the battles that followed it and half the legion could not possibly have fallen as that would indicate that forces that the lion brought to caliban also betrayed him after fighting broke out.

So with all these factors added together I would say around 30-40k fallen were on caliban, casualties would have been staggering on both sides due to the planetary defence weapons and the orbital bombardment that took place, but marines are nothing if no resilient so I would say (guess) 10-15k fallen were sucked into the warp, how many survived... No way of knowing.

As many as the plot demands there to be.

Raven guard are explicitly stated as the smallest legion now (before istvaan) so thousand sons are at least 80,000+

Except it was explicitly stated that Thousand Sons could only field ten 'fellowship's (1000). Thus they are at 10,000, Raven Guard can't be that small because Thousand Sons had mutation issues in the geneseed that caused them to become harder to create.

1000 thousand sons is going to ve retconned, it kinda already has with the New extermination book as it is stated the raven guard are the smallest legion, not "one" of the smallest, hence my general idea that the thousand sons must now be larger than 80,000

The Cypher dataslae explicitly stated that the Dark Angels have no friggin' idea how many fallen there are, which makes catching all of them a daunting task than it already is, to say the least.

TiamatRoar wrote:
The Cypher dataslae explicitly stated that the Dark Angels have no friggin' idea how many fallen there are, which makes catching all of them a daunting task than it already is, to say the least.

Plus the space and time thingy

It'd be pretty stupid of GW to give an exact number honestly. as it'd really only serve to tie their hands.

In fallen angels slightly more than 500 dark angels originally returned to Caliban but after that an unknown number more were also sent back and when Luther rebelled another 4212 marines were on the planet redying to be shipped of to join the great crusade. So with these numbers there would be around 5000 fallen, probably less since many died when Caliban was bombed. However with the Forge world retcons these numbers might change for the higher.

+ Those killed by say grey knights, other chaos factions, dark angels, and many others the exact number be insanely hard to predict

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
Estimate had about half the legion turning.

So at the very, very least, 5,000 turned with 10,000 being a lower number of legion. It was said they were moderate in number, with the lowest being Thousand Sons at 10,000. So somewhere above that at least.

Yeah but bear in mind the DA have been rounding them all up for a while, there are probably nowhere near 5000 left now.

 Metaljunx wrote:
Can anyone tell that how many fallen has been captured ? Or how many are there , the dark angels codex never tell how many are there . Or you all can just give your estimates

Depends, did a DA apothecary fall? cuz they could have been making new fallen for 10,000 years.


You got a roach problem, and no matter how many you kill there can always be more.

 Exergy wrote:

 Metaljunx wrote:
Can anyone tell that how many fallen has been captured ? Or how many are there , the dark angels codex never tell how many are there . Or you all can just give your estimates

Depends, did a DA apothecary fall? cuz they could have been making new fallen for 10,000 years.


You got a roach problem, and no matter how many you kill there can always be more.

The DA are fairly specific with how they define who is fallen and who is just a run of the mill chaos marine. Only those who rebelled with Luther are considered to be fallen, on the basis that they didn't understand the full implications of what they were doing. It's why they have such a heavy focus on making the fallen repent rather than just killing them. Any marine with DA geneseed who has turned or was created by the fallen after the destruction of Caliban don't have the excuse of ignorance of what they're dealing with.

Darn. I cant find my 5th ed. DA codex, but I remember one blurb about the Skull Rosarie beads the Interrogator Chaplains carry, (each representing a Fallen executed) and they stated there that the most successful Interrogator Chaplain of the entire Chapters history had like, 8 of them...

So Something tells me that they might not have even broken into triple digits yet at this time of total Fallen Captured.

Retaliation wrote:

 Exergy wrote:

 Metaljunx wrote:
Can anyone tell that how many fallen has been captured ? Or how many are there , the dark angels codex never tell how many are there . Or you all can just give your estimates

Depends, did a DA apothecary fall? cuz they could have been making new fallen for 10,000 years.

You got a roach problem, and no matter how many you kill there can always be more.

The DA are fairly specific with how they define who is fallen and who is just a run of the mill chaos marine. Only those who rebelled with Luther are considered to be fallen, on the basis that they didn't understand the full implications of what they were doing. It's why they have such a heavy focus on making the fallen repent rather than just killing them. Any marine with DA geneseed who has turned or was created by the fallen after the destruction of Caliban don't have the excuse of ignorance of what they're dealing with.

Good point,

But then you have the opposite problem. False positives. DA capturing a regular CSM and thinking they are one of the fallen, torturing him and forcing him to repent, crossing him off the list only to find out they got the wrong guy originally. Good heavens if they captured a slanneh marines, the torture might go on for centuries.

 Exergy wrote:

Retaliation wrote:

 Exergy wrote:

 Metaljunx wrote:
Can anyone tell that how many fallen has been captured ? Or how many are there , the dark angels codex never tell how many are there . Or you all can just give your estimates

Depends, did a DA apothecary fall? cuz they could have been making new fallen for 10,000 years.

You got a roach problem, and no matter how many you kill there can always be more.

The DA are fairly specific with how they define who is fallen and who is just a run of the mill chaos marine. Only those who rebelled with Luther are considered to be fallen, on the basis that they didn't understand the full implications of what they were doing. It's why they have such a heavy focus on making the fallen repent rather than just killing them. Any marine with DA geneseed who has turned or was created by the fallen after the destruction of Caliban don't have the excuse of ignorance of what they're dealing with.

Good point,

But then you have the opposite problem. False positives. DA capturing a regular CSM and thinking they are one of the fallen, torturing him and forcing him to repent, crossing him off the list only to find out they got the wrong guy originally. Good heavens if they captured a slanneh marines, the torture might go on for centuries.

You have to consider that the DA have a few advantages on their side. First is that The Rock is the original fortress monastery of the 1st legion and where luther made his home. You don't simply garrison something like 5000 marines on a world without some kind of record, even if it's just a name (And since the DA are about as obsessive compulsive as the Ad Mech when it comes to knowledge, you can bet they still have those records). In Ravenwing, it's noted that they even know there are less than 10 fallen librarians remaining. I suppose the one thing they can't do though is distinguish those that remained loyal on caliban, which is why DA librarians have no idea what is up with Cypher.

Second is the skill of their interrogator chaplains. These are the men who have had 10k years to master their art, and obtain confessions from fallen who may have since completely consumed the Chaos Kool-Aid. They're probably tied for (if not the) most experienced of torturer's in the Imperium, probably on the level of Dark Eldar (Asmodai is certainly about as sadistic as one, although in a way more like the Raiders of the Lost Ark interrogator guy).

I thought I had a third point, but I seem to have forgotten it .

The Cypher Dataslate shows that the DA are actually capable of psychically detecting Fallen (I forget why. Prolly cause they share the same gene seed), and they're also VERY good at identifying "patterns" and acts that indicate a Fallen is doing something. So there probably aren't too many false positives.

TiamatRoar wrote:
The Cypher Dataslate shows that the DA are actually capable of psychically detecting Fallen (I forget why. Prolly cause they share the same gene seed), and they're also VERY good at identifying "patterns" and acts that indicate a Fallen is doing something. So there probably aren't too many false positives.

very good =/= infallible. Chaos is weird, anything that you could do to positively identify a Fallen could be faked, and there are plenty of powerful entities in Chaos's service that love to joke around. And while some of the inner circle might be really good at it, some might not be. They probably get really good at it by getting 2-3 false positives and then up their game.

....yes. So there probably aren't too many false positives. I never said there were none at all.

 Formosa wrote:
1000 thousand sons is going to ve retconned, it kinda already has with the New extermination book as it is stated the raven guard are the smallest legion, not "one" of the smallest, hence my general idea that the thousand sons must now be larger than 80,000

no.

in a thousand sons Ahriman clearly states he has only around 1000 brothers left. he then states that, that is 1 tenth of the legion. so no.

anyway getting back to DA 20,000 arrived at macragge after the thamas crusade with the lion at the head. that was the fully deployed legion.

half the legion remained on caliban. therefore DA could field 40k but 20k turned... therefore you have 20 fallen. caliban blown apart along with a vast majority of the legion on caliban which means we can assume that there was a decent mortality rate. lets say 80% died which leaves 4,000 escaped into the warp... and the DA have caught what? 5 of them?

 MrBlackledge wrote:
means we can assume that there was a decent mortality rate. lets say 80% died which leaves 4,000 escaped into the warp

With you entirely until the mortality rate.

Marines like never die. Unless they get decapitated by Daemon Swords, if you dont see them die they are not dead.

Wounded, otherwise out of action possible, but unless you are sure they are dead they aren't dead.

Example. In the iron cage incident, the iron warriors trap a bunch of imp fists and surround them, doing enormous damage and completely surrounding them to the point that the imp fists have to use the bodies of their fallen brothers for cover. The imp fists landed in strength, yet in the end only like 100 of them died. Doubtful there would have even been enough bodies to use as cover, but that is the stupid GW fluff. Marines never actually die.

 MrBlackledge wrote:


anyway getting back to DA 20,000 arrived at macragge after the thamas crusade with the lion at the head. that was the fully deployed legion.

half the legion remained on caliban. therefore DA could field 40k but 20k turned... therefore you have 20 fallen. caliban blown apart along with a vast majority of the legion on caliban which means we can assume that there was a decent mortality rate. lets say 80% died which leaves 4,000 escaped into the warp... and the DA have caught what? 5 of them?

That 20,000 marines arrived to Macragge with the Lion doesn't mean more than that that's the number of dark angels in the Lion's expeditionary fleet. There were many other smaller expeditionary fleets, most notably one under the command of the Lion's second-in-command Corswain.

I have't been able to find any reference that stated that half the legion remained on Caliban, only that Luther turned the recruits thee on training, in fallen angels numbering about 4000 marines, and a small cadre of about 1000 older marines that had displeased el'johnson.

Before any fallen were taken away by the warp during the fall of Caliban the loyalists attacked the planet and bombed it to kingdom come so a decent number of traitors probably died in the barrage, not even a marine can survive a orbital barrage.

true a marine has no change of the bombardment but getting back to numbers i was going on rough digits, 20,000 were with the lion true and corswain had his number but nobody knows the exact size of of the DA during the heresy and we know that fully 50% of the legion turned on itself and that 50% were based on caliban with Luther. yes luther went back with a thousand or so marines and they recruited theres for half a century. when the rebellions started on caliban the recruits that were meant to join the DA fleets instead stuck with caliban and stayed there.

in letters luther told the lion how they had brought the process down to around a year (which is the fastest any legion produced marines- accept for the RG calamity) Luther was barely with the lion for a decade before being sent back home with the rest of his buddies.

we have to make a lot of assumptions with the DA as they are all very secretive and what not but it is easy to go off of numbers and facts that we do have. which is 50% of the legion turned. there were 20,000 at macragge which means at least 20,000 turned. its very plausable.

 MrBlackledge wrote:

we have to make a lot of assumptions with the DA as they are all very secretive and what not but it is easy to go off of numbers and facts that we do have. which is 50% of the legion turned. there were 20,000 at macragge which means at least 20,000 turned. its very plausable.

Could you point out to me a reliable source that states that 50% of the legion turned, according to fallen angels, the latest DA codeex, lexicanum, the cypher dataslate and the index astartes at least there is no reference to that number, only that Luther, the Lion's second-in-command turned to chaos and managed to sway some of the marines on Caliban to his cause.

That half of the legion would be stationed on Caliban is preposterous. The Lion was famed for his strategic genious and I find it very hard to believe that he would station tens of thousands of marines on a single, loyal planet just to hang around. While they did train a lot of recruits on Caliban everyone except the last contingent of 4220 marines were sent of to the fight in the crusade and it wasn't until after the previous contingent had been sent of that Luther started his rebellion. So with these 4200 marines and a training corp of 1000 marines at most you could at most have 5000 fallen running around and that is including all the fallen that propably died during the orbital bombardment and the following ground attack.

all over the place it says that half the legion turned on itself. half=50%... why would i make it up?

and ok say what you want im really not in the mood to argue

Love the topic! glad there are so many DA player who cares about the fluff!

In 'Fallen Angels' I recall that Luther sents out a few thousands of new recult to support the DA crusade at a time. the plot goes that with Luther's management, DA recults rates have increased 20%. But I don't know if that translates to 3k+20% per shipment or just faster shipments. I also recall that one of the shipment was delayed by Luther. So my guess the maximum Fallen would be 2x(3k+20%) recults + the SM sent back to Calbian with Luther.

 MrBlackledge wrote:
all over the place it says that half the legion turned on itself. half=50%... why would i make it up?

and ok say what you want im really not in the mood to argue

Franckly neither am I. But most of this thread is based on the false assumption that half the legion turned, something I can find no proof of anywhere reliable and which seems quite silly strategically, I should at least point out the potentially major fault in the argumentation to get it back on track.

I would guess that the assumption that half of the first legion turned comes from the fact that a full half of the legions turned and that the turning of the fallen would reflect the wider events of the wider heresy.

My assumption of 'half' in this context is that the DA has broken into 2 groups. not exactly number wise of exactly 50% of the total number of DA at that time.

I'm willing to estimate the Fallen DA to be in the range of 3K - 7K when Lion returns to caliban. but we never had any figures on how many Loyal DA were left after the HH. so saying 50% is kinda misleading IMO.

Also when the Lion bombard Caliban I'm sure a lot of those fallen DA died during the bombardment. further reducing the Fallen DA that was sucked into the warp.

Perhaps we can deduct the Fallen left alive after the bombardment? can we get a rough est of how many loyal SM were there after the viral bomb event on Isstavan III?