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When the second founding occured, every Legion split as much as possible into chapters,

Except the Wolves of Fenris.
Does this mean the Space Wolves are still Legion-ish sized? or that they were just a fairly small legion?

Or something else?

They were always a small legion...
They took fairly heavy losses burning Prospero and then they were then vanguard to the loyalist counter-attack where they took even more casualties.
They then formed another chapter of marines (The Wolf Brothers, subsequently lost)
Basically they are still fairly substantial but far smaller than they used to be.

Basically what Purp's said.

It's worth noting however, that as a Chapter they're almost certainly larger than Codex Astartes size; probably being anywhere between 1200 and 3000 Wolves it seems. I'd guestimate around 2000...

They were also a small Legion before Prospero it appears; probably due to their gene-seed and their role as executioners.

Their gene-seed probably also limits the size of their chapter still.

I would suggest that the fact they recruit just from a single world also means that they can't replace/recruit at the same rate as some of the other chapters too possibly.


....they also lost a few more squads post Prospero too when they were..... away...

Just Dave wrote:Basically what Purp's said.

It's worth noting however, that as a Chapter they're almost certainly larger than Codex Astartes size; probably being anywhere between 1200 and 3000 Wolves it seems. I'd guestimate around 2000...

They were also a small Legion before Prospero it appears; probably due to their gene-seed and their role as executioners.

Their role as executioners is probaly over (if big E doesn't communicate with them telepaticaly)...Now, they are Imperium's vanguard against Chaos mostly,but I do reckon there are more of them if you add 13th Great Company:-)

At the end of Battle of the Fang its pretty explicitly stated that there are around two thousand Space Wolves even after the nigh destruction of one of the Great Companies.

The Canis Helix in their geneseed will only create potentially-viable Space Marines from the gene-stock of the Fenrisians. If you put SW geneseed into people from other worlds, Very Bad Things happen.

Thus, the SW have no further Successor Chapters.

I believe the Wolf Brothers turned to Chaos also.

Psienesis wrote:The Canis Helix in their geneseed will only create potentially-viable Space Marines from the gene-stock of the Fenrisians. If you put SW geneseed into people from other worlds, Very Bad Things happen.

Thus, the SW have no further Successor Chapters.

Not necessarily true. You're dealing with a problem with small sample sizes. There has been only one SW successor chapter, so even though that one went, shall we say, poorly, it is not a given that another founding would fail. Plus it is not unlikely that the Thousand Sons might have played a role, given the use of the 'surviving' wolf brothers as a distraction during the assault on the Fang.

Actually question, why does the Canis Helix allow Space Wolves to be made, but not Space Wolves with a different name?

As a note on the Wolf Brothers. I keep hearing “It went badly”, but I cant find any fluff on exactly happened.

Canoe Helix: per Deliverance Lost, might literally involve dog/wolf DNA. Speculation as to why the Wolf Brothers went south involves the idea that early Fenris colonists modified their genes to survive on the planet, or that subjects that have the Canis Helix in their system need a harsh environment in order to temper it's effects (otherwise you go full Wulfen).
There is zero official reason why there are only Wolves on Fenris (there are no wolves on Fenris).

Wolf Brothers: forget the source, but basically they were on an arctic planet (effectively Hoth) where the loclals lived in happy fun domes. He Wolf Brothers thought the locals were wimps, what with their domes and shelter and heating and whatnot. No biggie, then a century or three later, contact was lost with the WB world. Someone investigated and discovered that all the dome cities had been busted open, the locals were all dead, and the Wolf Brothers were gone. Last mention that I know of them is when Magnus sicced them on the SW as part of a psy-ops/delaying action in the Battle of the Fang.

As the Imperium is nothing if not risk adverse when dealing with mutation (bad mutation like Wulfen, not good mutation like Navigators) that is most left why there hasn't been another SW successor. They tried it once and it went so wrong that they're highly unlikely to try it again.

Do all succesors have to be from a different planet than the parent legion?

No, but Fenris is a Death World, and has a fairly low population to begin with. It simply cannot support providing people for more than one Chapter without risking its ability to maintain a population at all.

Based on a different planet yes. Part of the reasoning behind the Codex was to prevent the concentration of power that the old legions had, and basing two chapters on the same planet would be an obvious way to bypass some of those restrictions. Not that having 2k vs 1k SM on a planet is the end of the world, it's just that it's such an obvious thing to forbid in the Codex Astartes.

But Space Wolves say screw the codex.

Great White wrote:Actually question, why does the Canis Helix allow Space Wolves to be made, but not Space Wolves with a different name?

This is a good question. Also, surely there were Terran Space Wolves.

English Assassin wrote:

Great White wrote:Actually question, why does the Canis Helix allow Space Wolves to be made, but not Space Wolves with a different name?

This is a good question. Also, surely there were Terran Space Wolves.

A valid point, the Legion existed before they rediscovered Fenris and Leman Russ, so the Emperor was creating Space Wolves from Terran stock which means that the Fenrisian gene pool isn't necessary in creating Space Wolves.

Brother Heinrich wrote:A valid point, the Legion existed before they rediscovered Fenris and Leman Russ, so the Emperor was creating Space Wolves from Terran stock which means that the Fenrisian gene pool isn't necessary in creating Space Wolves.

Geneseed mutation would seem to be the logical explanation. Back when the Emperor created the Chapter, I'm fairly sure it did not have issues like people turning into half-beasts also.

Well did Russ add wolf DNA to the Geneseed after he was found?

Lynata wrote:

Brother Heinrich wrote:A valid point, the Legion existed before they rediscovered Fenris and Leman Russ, so the Emperor was creating Space Wolves from Terran stock which means that the Fenrisian gene pool isn't necessary in creating Space Wolves.

Geneseed mutation would seem to be the logical explanation. Back when the Emperor created the Chapter, I'm fairly sure it did not have issues like people turning into half-beasts also.

True but the great Crusade only lasted a couple hundred years and Immediately after the Heresy the second founding occurred, shortly after which the Wolf Brothers went rogue. It seems like more of an issue with the numbers to create another founding, than genetic instability. If they're genetic instability was that bad I think it would have been noticed by the big E.

Great White wrote:Well did Russ add wolf DNA to the Geneseed after he was found?

Nope. It's specifically mentioned in Deliverance Lost that the genetic code for the VI Legion's Primarch had canine DNA elements. And this was out of the Emperor's original stock of primarch goop from when he made them.

Black Templars are the ones who ignore the codex. The Wolves view it more as rough guidelines that can be skirted around. The Imperium probably doesn't care much about your chapter's org chart, but they'll definitely prick up their ears if they hear about a chapter getting excessively large.

Mind you, the HH novel series was written many years after SW fluff was established. Of course, in the writing of the series, now they're running into problems that they didn't have to consider previously...

... such as why the original Space Wolves, including Russ himself, are not Fenrisian natives, and yet survived, while anyone they put the geneseed in now, even immediately after the Heresy, becomes a slavering werewolf-thing and goes mad, or suffers other, seriously debilitating effects.

Great White wrote:But Space Wolves say screw the codex.

They may eschew some of the organizational doctrines in the Codex, but they can't just ignore all of it.

It's not Nam Smokey, there are rules here. Space Marine Chapters get away with a ton of stuff if they want to. And the Space Wolves are no exception. But if they were to just start churning out new Space Wolves and suddenly pranced around the galaxy with ten thousand or more Marines, somebody would notice, and eventually it would come down on them. The Black Templars get away with it solely because they're never in the same place and have no homeworld.

As to the original question, it's pretty much been answered. But it's important to note that since the original fluff (divided in half, then the Wolf Brothers degenerated and were destroyed), the HH books have made the Legions much bigger. So if the fluff is still the same (divided in half), then we can only assume that it means the Space Wolves were pretty small by the time the division occurred.

Which is fine, it makes sense. The Space Wolves probably took horrendous casualties against the Thousand Sons. Fighting a psychically active foe, who were defending on their own turf with a planetary PDF to back them up? Anybody with a lick of knowledge in military history would tell you that's a recipe for a blood bath. So we can assume that the battle of Propsero would have whittled them down some. And then they fought at Terra, which would have probably also caused a lot of casualties. Then they go through the entire Scouring.

All the while, they're still only recruiting from a single home world, with a limited population. The Space Wolves probably just didn't have the resources and logistics to replace their battle losses and increase their numbers like the Ultramarines did. And while Russ was a great leader, he didn't have Guilliman's strategic acumen. And the Space Wolves have always been more brutal and direct as far as Space Marines go. So we can assume they took a lot of casualties, and were only able to supply a limited number of new recruits. By the time Guilliman splits up the Legions, we can safely assume that the Space Wolves were probably amongst the smallest of the Legions, which is why they only had to divide once.

There were wulfen during the Crusade, and the Heresy. The problem didnt start directly after Horus's rebellion. Look at the Buring of Prospero, they have whole packs of wulfen fighting the TS.

Some Space Wolves successor chapters are known, such as the Wolf Brothers (though they didnt end up too well).

Their current size is probably around the ~1,000 mark, likely maybe ~1,500ish due to their non-Codex organization and lack of successors.

I remeber reading somthing about Space Wolf Companies going on campain and just never coming back.

Some serious lack of SW lore in this thread. Some people are partially correct, others are so left field you think they are fanfiction writers looking to get their blogs some visitors.

1. Wulfen were present during the Razing of Prospero. The highest occurence of wulfen were in the 13th Co at that time.

2. After Prospero, after the HH, after the Scouring, and after the Battle of the Fang, there were over 2k Space Wolves, not including the 12th Great Company which needed to be rebuilt after defending the Aett.

3. Current numbers on the SW chapter range from 1800-2400. This does not include Great Companies that have gone off to do their own thing; Great Hunt, etc,etc.

4. The Wolf Brothers were originally founded with half the Legions fleet, armoury, and priests. Also included were an initial jarl and accompanied wolf guard to start the successor. A planet of fire and ice, with a similar population/culture to Fenris was chosen to be their homeworld.

5. For ages it was listed as genetic instability that forced the disbanding of the Wolf Brothers. However the Wolf Brothers as depicted in Battle of the Fang are corrupted, not wulfen, which speaks to the conclusion that the Canis Helix did not take in them. Despite what a recent WD would want you to believe, exposure to the effects of Chaos brings forth the change into wulfen with the examples given by the 13th Co and in the novel Prospero Burns.

Tyr Grimtooth wrote:Some serious lack of SW lore in this thread. Some people are partially correct, others are so left field you think they are fanfiction writers looking to get their blogs some visitors.

1. Wulfen were present during the Razing of Prospero. The highest occurence of wulfen were in the 13th Co at that time.

2. After Prospero, after the HH, after the Scouring, and after the Battle of the Fang, there were over 2k Space Wolves, not including the 12th Great Company which needed to be rebuilt after defending the Aett.

3. Current numbers on the SW chapter range from 1800-2400. This does not include Great Companies that have gone off to do their own thing; Great Hunt, etc,etc.

4. The Wolf Brothers were originally founded with half the Legions fleet, armoury, and priests. Also included were an initial jarl and accompanied wolf guard to start the successor. A planet of fire and ice, with a similar population/culture to Fenris was chosen to be their homeworld.

5. For ages it was listed as genetic instability that forced the disbanding of the Wolf Brothers. However the Wolf Brothers as depicted in Battle of the Fang are corrupted, not wulfen, which speaks to the conclusion that the Canis Helix did not take in them. Despite what a recent WD would want you to believe, exposure to the effects of Chaos brings forth the change into wulfen with the examples given by the 13th Co and in the novel Prospero Burns.

The man's spot on AFAIK.
Although, I'd like to know the source for 3 and 4; I've heard them both before but I don't know where? I don't recall Battle of the Fang being that specific with their numbers...
Personally, I think for 5 it was mainly genetic instability which was then seized upon by Chaos/corruption - so both was my interpretation.