 The 15th Legion were akin to no other across the span of the Imperium. Magnus the Red, the Crimson King, had subsequent to his assuming of command, remade his thousand sons utterly and entirely along his own deeply idiosyncratic patterns. Some formations, though recognisable from either other legions, or the precepts of that great work of military organization, the Principia Bellicosa, had been assessed by the Primarch's Cyclopean gaze and found suitable for attention. Everything else he had done away with, and resculpted to better meet his singular vision. Never one to be demure about his accomplishments, Magnus was known to have boasted to whom so ever of his brothers would listen that the entire structure of the thousand sons was there neither by accident nor coincidence, and that even if the precepts of the Principia had not been applied since the Legion's foundation, he would have done so upon their reunification, for all of which happens in my sons is held in mine eye long before it is born into their hearts and minds. Whether this speaks to the extent of either Magnus's prescience or his ego is down to debate, but at the very least it does clearly state that when it came to how his thousand sons operated, his was the word absolute, brooking no challenge to its authority. Just how their uniqueness was made manifest, how their father had shaped them, and the profound effects both would have upon their history, these are the subjects of this chronicle. Now then, this is a record of the formations, strategic preferences, and tactical disposition of the 15th Legion, thousand sons. Where the 15th most aligned with other contemporary legions was upon the level of the individual squads and units. They were still a frontline Astartes Legion in Imperial service, and whatever their unique abilities made full usage of the arms, armor, and armaments befitting an Astartes Legion, lest they become disadvantaged in one of the great crusades many exotic theaters of war. The thousand sons were ever and always still Astartes, more than capable of enacting destruction on incredible levels, however mundane said destruction was. If the Legion can be said to have paid preference to any one strategic disposition or other, it can be noted that they paid a special favor to the mechanized infantry model, basing the vast majority of their engagements upon the rapid and safe delivery of tactical, support, and other more specialized infantry squads into combat. This functionally is where the mundane ends and the esoteric begins, as this tactical preference is of course intended not to bring the bolters of the Astartes closer to the enemy, but their very minds. Ensuring squads are able to quickly reach locations upon the battlefield where their psychic powers could be utilized to the fullest extent was paramount to Legion combat doctrine, and necessitated a system of transport and intelligence that could respond rapidly to changing battlefield circumstances. This also bears weight when one considers numerous engagements undertaken by the Legion when they were observed to be significantly lacking in the tools of war they should have brought forth foresaid combat action, such as for instance heavy artillery for fortification assaults or super heavy vehicles for armoured warfare engagements. In all such cases, the fifteenth psychic might more than made up for their supposed lack of equipment, carrying the day against dupendous odds with little more than Astartes in rhino armour personnel carriers or storm eagle flyers. It is of course notable and perhaps would go without saying to any familiar with their history that the Thousand Sons shunned in absolute terms any conflicts that would see them engage in attritional warfare, despite their predominant use of infantry. Never did the Legion actively or willingly enter such a theatre, regardless of their objective or their orders or even the potential prize at stake. They strove additionally to never allow themselves to be surrounded, cut off. Engaging a far higher than average amount of reconnaissance craft, squads and forward strategic planning than other legions did. Engaging in intelligence gathering of extensive means to ensure such outcomes would if not never incredibly unlikely occur. Where the Thousand Sons truly departed from their Legion brethren, lay in the complexity of their internal hierarchies. In a similar fashion to the first Legion Dark Angels, which held within itself organisational circles that overlapped and undercut the mundane Legion chain of command, the Thousand Sons built into its post reunification framework, foundational establishments of prospering society. Foremost amongst them were the five fold cults, cabals that oversaw the fundamental pillars of psychic adeptry that the civilisation of the homeworld of Magnus the Red had mastered and sought to perfect. All the powers of the Eldritch are as many and as varied as the stars in the sky. Prosperine society, had in the name of rigorous discipline and training, sought where possible to group manifestations of psychic might under broad umbrella terms, allowing for both control and study and onward refinement. From this, the cults were born, and, imperial truth defying term aside, they were readily applied to the Thousand Sons by Magnus. Each was headed by a Magister Templi, although the title of Arch Magus of each of the cults was an honour that belonged to none but Magnus himself, he who had been deemed by the great and good of Prospero to have mastered all five better than anyone yet alive, save perhaps the Emperor of Mankind. Of the cults themselves, each possessed radically different doctrines and philosophies, and then both the Prosperine and the Crimson King enjoyed fostering for the academic competition it led to between them. Only through the rigorous application of the mind could the human future be assured, as the Primarch was known to have said. Few indeed knew the mind better than the Athenean. Cult masters of the ethereal workings of the brain, these astartes were better known to the wider Imperium by the designation of telepaths, although many were known to balk at what they saw at a reductive term for their abilities, only serving to conjure images of Tapani sorcerers claiming to read minds. In practice, the unity of thought that the Atheneans provided to their comrades granted the Thousand Sons one of, if not the, most peerless communications infrastructures of the entire Ligunes astartes. Unbreakable to external ears and unparalleled in both the scope of what it could convey and the scale at which it could do so. Athenean cult astartes were responsible for the sheer degree of coordination that the Thousand Sons often possessed, forming loci of command for their brethren, but away from the battlefield they would often be reclusive or withdrawn figures, often theorized that this was a result of being connected to so many other selves so often. Nevertheless, the cult was often the foremost point of contact between the Legion and the wider Imperium, the 15th clearly knowing the value of negotiating points of diplomacy with full knowledge of what the other party or parties were thinking. Utterly dissimilar to the Atheneans in both character and conduct, the Pyre were the most bellicose cult of the 15th Legion, being its masters of fire, and of a temper much like the element they sought to control. During the bulwark of the Legion's purely destructive adepts, the Pyre were a nightmare in flame upon the battlefield, conjuring hellstorms of incinerative power from their hands, reducing enemy battalions or even cities to nothing but ash. Of a martial temperament to a man, the Pyre engaged with their more esoteric brethren often bluntly, but never dullly, as they were keen intellects all, simply more often than not bent towards annihilation rather than creation or exploration. Their essential opposites among the cults were the Corvide, whose abilities bent towards the arts of divination. By far the most esoteric of all of the cults, the Corvide's membership was small, owing to the degree of difficulty inherent in the mastery of its arts and the dearth of candidates for itself, which it tended to lose to the more martial of the cults, although it was not like they were uninvolved in war-making. Corvide members were responsible for the strategic planning of Legion campaigns and engagements, and for the primary reason, the Legion's casualties rarely rose to notable amounts, as mentioned earlier. Scrying the strands of linear time, even so far as to affect it minutely through actual chronomancy, was a task suited for only the strongest and most expansive of minds, making inclusion amongst its ranks something of a high honour in amongst itself. It is perhaps little surprise that the vaunted and accursed Azek Ariman, chief librarian of the Legion, belonged to the Corvide. Similarly involved in the well-being of their brothers, the Pavani were the masters of biomancy, and were considered healers unparalleled across the Imperium, boundary defining in their ability to interface the powers of the Immaterium with the workings of mortal flesh. The Pavani's talents could bring their brethren back from the brink of certain death. Organs and wounds reneging at speeds even Astartes physiology would not allow for. Upon the battlefield, their arts could be employed defensively, hardening the bodies of their kin against damage, or offensively, ordering the very biology of their foes to rebel against them in gorelly destructive fashions. Often said to possess the heart of the Legion, the Pavani were considered its keepers of doctrine, both physical and philosophical, and often produced orators that Imperial iterators would commend for their excellence. Finally, the Raptora were the telekinetics of the Legion, bending their wills to the manipulation of the physical through the means Aetheric, capable of everything from conjuring invisible barriers to shield themselves and their squadmates to crushing enemies by overpowering invisible forces. The Raptora were often considered cold by their Legion brethren, although with it were possessed of impeccable logic and reasoning sensibilities. All squad leaders, and almost all line Astartes with any experience, were parts of the five-fold cults. Though not always the case, typically, seniority in the mundane chain of command tended to be reflected by a position within the cult itself, as both were strict meritocracies. A warrior's rise through the layers of knowledge was often mirrored by his rise through the Legion's hierarchy, as the experience granted to him by cult studies and battlefield experiences tended to be mutually beneficial. The Legion was organized entirely differently to others, with the 15th equivalent of a line company being known as a circle, or perhaps sometimes a chantry, depending upon the tastes of its senior staff. There was no numerical baseline for these circles. Their size could vary from a half-dozen squad to over a hundred. This was no accident, nor even the result of strategic pressures or necessities demanded by the Great Crusade. Rather, as one finds so often with the Thousand Sons, the number within each circle was ordered by the tenants of a cult significance, to form more pleasing eldritch alignments to the currents of the Imitarium. Their designations, too, did not follow strict numerical patterns, instead being named and structured according to the impenetrable rites of the greater Prosperite Mysteries. Crusade staff attendants may have wondered why the Circle of Ied-9, consisting of 512 warriors, was serving alongside the 77 Astartes of the Circle of Helios-22. But had the Thousand Sons even deigned to explain such a thing, it is unlikely if any outside of their ranks would ever have understood the significance anyway. The circles were all part of the largest of the Legion's operational structures, the Nine Fellowships. Roughly comparable to a chapter or grand company in other legions, it has been alleged in the past that the 15th possessed prior to the finding of Magnus ten fellowships, but their severely reduced numbers forced the Primarch to bring this down to the nine that would survive. It has also been alleged, although only in hindsight, that another hand had compelled the Primarch to make this numerical shift, given the arcane significance of the number nine, to one of the primordial annihilator's greater pantheon. That I shall not comment upon here, but as Magnus himself so often proclaimed, nothing about the Thousand Sons ever occurred by accident. Should the number of circles within a fellowship change, the number and indeed size of all circles within all fellowships was shifted according to the writ of the Athenean cult and of Magnus himself, and would never occur within the same alignment twice. Additionally, the Legion possessed within its macro structure three orders whose existence lay both within the bounds of the chain of command and beyond it. Their members were at once beholden not only to their place within the Legion and the Five Fold cults, but were also allowed to bridge the divides by dint of their statuses within the orders. There exist a high degree of similarities between these orders, and those that lay within the mysterious depths of the Dark Angels. Both existed outside of all other means of organization within their respective legions, and, like the Angels, the orders of the 15th appear to have been a response to the rigors of the Great Crusade. They were not concerned with the mastery of any particular type of psychic adeptry. That, of course, lay with the cults. Neither did they concern themselves with simple military applications, for that lay under the purview of the circles and the fellowships. Instead, the orders seemed to be a hybrid of these demands, an outgrowing of the strictures of Prospero and, indeed, Magnus's pre-Crusade thinking, a response, if you will, to the sheer scope of the imperial endeavor and what it demanded of those who fought within it. The Order of Ruin, for example, were a sect consisting of numerologists and logisticians who desired to explore the depths of numerology and how it pertained to universal macro structures, often with an eye to the ability of mathematics to un-make. Put simply, when the 15th Legion deployed its armor and artillery, the Order of Ruin were there to guide their number and deployment, even down to the timing and placement and quantity of shells. By reputation, those of the Order were able to bring about the annihilation of the foe with numerical perfection, knowing precisely the right amount of force to apply, and when, to wreck the maximum amount of devastation, all according to calculations that were conducted on a scale cyclopian in its magnitude. This logistical mastery extended beyond the battlefield and into strategic campaign planning, with the Order of Ruin often forming the core of the Legion's analytic a staff alongside Corvide adepts, assisting through means arcane the optimal deployment of Astartes, as well as ensuring that these Astartes would have all the resources that were needed to accomplish their objectives. As part of their role in ensuring the Legion's supply chains remained optimal, the Order of Ruin had a close partnership with the mechanical forgeworld of Shao Arkad, the Legion's almost sole supplier of arms and ammunition. If the Order of Ruin consisted of a large amount of the Legion's techmarines and previans, the Order of the Jackal held within it almost all of the Legion's apothecarian wing, and a significant amount of these were of the Povani cult. The smallest of all the orders, the Jackal's purpose was twofold, to oversee the recruitment of Astartes candidates and to remember those Astartes who had fallen. They were responsible for both the next generation of the Legion and that which had just passed. Tending to both the management of the Gene Seed repositories upon Prospero and the grave urns beneath the Templum cities. Recruitment of Neophytes went far beyond the simple genetic sampling run by other legions. Aspirants of the Thousand Sons were expected to reach standards of academia to simply qualify. Once passed, they were submitted to the Order of the Jackal for examination, whose adepts would scry their futures and probe their minds to determine their suitability. Additionally, theirs would be the final say for what grievously injured Astartes would be granted eternal life within the sarcophaguses of Legion dreadnoughts. The future of the 15th was at stake, and for a Legion that had come so close to annihilation in the past, it was a responsibility that the Thousand Sons and the Order of the Jackal took incredibly seriously. The position was ritual as much as practical, with Order members additionally charged with the preservation of the Legion's cultural touchstones and practices. While their skills would of course generally fall under the purview of the Povani, and indeed many of that cult were present within the Order, the rigors of being the soul of the Legion demanded membership across all five cults, their dual allegiance being represented on their armor by the signature Jackal-headed icon alongside emblems of cult, fellowship, and circle. Finally, the Order of Blindness is perhaps the most curious of the three. Indeed, that we know of it to this day is only through extrapolation of scanned hints of its existence, as its purpose appears to be explicitly dedicated to secret intelligence. Thought to have been headed by Amon, the Primarch's equary and former master, little is known about their practices or disposition. It is known that akin to the 20th Legion, they were fond of using psychically conditioned baseline humans as part of surveillance and infiltration operations, such as the infamous case of Casper Hauser and the Sixth Legion space wolves, but were equally capable of using Astartes for the same purpose. It is known that they were responsible for the recruitment and control of the Thousand Sons' more fringe military formations, such as the Legion's destroyer cadres, although the overlap of the purposes between these and the Order of Ruin suggests that those of the Blindness utilize them for infrastructural sabotage and terrorism operations. Beyond the circles, fellowships and cults and orders, there existed within the Legion hundreds of diverse symposia, covens and cabals, all of whom were organized by Legion members enthusiastically to pursue some form of psychic mastery or academic investigation or philosophical debate. Some elected to practice in relative secrecy, others did so quite openly and all did so under the eye and awareness of Magnus and his senior staff. The subdivisions of these covens had no impact on Legion or cult chain of command in any real capacity, serving more as extracurricular pursuits, eagerly encouraged by the Primarch, but it was common enough for them to spill over, so to speak, into the Legion's military concerns, especially if the practice of a cabal concerned itself with battlefield applications. These interests were as diverse, idiosyncratic, and indeed fleeting as any aspect of the Thousand Sun's character. The Atman, for instance, were a group of merely ten initiates of the Corvide cult who strove to perfect the means of psychic observation of the distant human past, apparently to no avail. By contrast, the Aquile Coven bent their minds into investigating the nature of the warp itself, only to be forcibly disbanded by Magnus the Red himself for reasons unknown. The importance, fame, and membership of all of these organizations varies wildly during the latter years of the Great Crusade. It is likely that there will never be a full account of their number or their predilections. The arcane iconography their members liked to adopt upon their armor only served to render the structure of the Thousand Sun's even more Byzantine in appearance to outsiders, and all the more so because it very clearly was occurring under some form of purposeful direction. While none within the Thousand Sun's ever broke their vows of secrecy and granted outsiders knowledge to the Legion's inner mysteries, they were known to have an annoying to infuriating habit of insinuating towards them, dropping snippets of lore, but never letting go of anything more than they explicitly desired to. This teasing was highly irksome to Astartes of other legions, and did nothing to dispel the infernal reek of sorcery that the Legion possessed. Every one of the Legiones Astartes possessed their secrets. It's just that all of them were dedicated to at least allaying the suspicion of them, or simply hid them. The most secret of the legions, the Dark Angels, and the Alpha Legion, were unashamed of the degree of impenetrability they deliberately maintained, seeing it as both their right as legions and as a powerful tool for their purposes. The Thousand Sun's wore their secrets as a crown upon their head, openly reveling in how little the great unwashed of the Imperium knew about them. This is undeniably the product of a besieged mentality, the Legion having been hounded since its creation by the ignorant and the bigoted, and had in doing so transformed the point that should be their shame into their pride. This is of course a perfectly laudable path to follow when presented with the horrors of intolerance. When it came to the specific mysteries of 15th Legion guarded, one wonders if other courses of action at the time would not have been more productive in this particular case. In terms of its overall structure, chroniclers of ages past have likened, perhaps in frustration, the chain of command of the Legion to one of the Pyramids of Tisga itself. Magnus existed at the summit, the font of all authority within the Thousand Suns, which flowed down to the captains of the Nine Fellowships, then to their attended Magisteria, then to the Legates and Lion captains, and from there to the various commissioned officers of the Circles. In the aftermath of the Legion's reunification with the Primarch, Magnus had formed at its core the Rehati, a coven of the most senior surviving Legion officers, as yet unafflicted by the flesh change, a cabal that would persist until the Legion's fate upon Prospero during the burning. While it is unclear if the Nine captains were similarly part of the Rehati consistently, the coven also possessed members from outside the regular chain of command. The simple answer, however, of the Legion structure is, as again with the Dark Angels, belied by its internal workings, although for different reasons than their tenebrous kin. Authority was indeed self-evident from the obvious ranks, but the fact that standing within the cults or the orders played a part in an Astartes' relative seniority is undeniable, and deeply relative. Sheer psychic power was often a determinant too. All members of the Legion were psychers in some way, shape, or form, but not all possessed the gift to a degree that they could wield their talents to the degree that the Legion was famed for. Those who lacked a manifested talent would inevitably rank below their psychically gifted brethren, consigned forever to life as a lie in Astartes, as the more powerful escalated quickly through the ranks of the fellowships and the cults. In other legions, this would have created a significant gap in brotherhood, an underclass, if you will, but in the 15th it appears that the Astartes did their best to ensure that those lacking significant abilities were still nurtured and assigned to the best of their talents, even if it was done so often clearly out of pity. Beyond this, memberships of the cults and orders carried significances few outsiders ever had an insight into. All of these subtle and hidden factors were at play whenever A Thousand Sun received a promotion, permeating every iota of authority the Legion professed, and forming, in effect, a great lattice game the Thousand Suns seemed to delight in maneuvering through. By its numbers, the Thousand Suns prior to the outbreak of the heresy had clearly still not recovered from the curse of the flesh change, although considering their tribulations their disposition was quite admirable. Estimates consistently placed them at having between 80 and 85,000 serving Astartes, the bulk of which were stationed on and around Prospero when not engaged in campaigns with imperial expeditionary fleets. Having been reduced to a mere 1,000 Astartes by the time Magnus was found in 840 M30, this would have left a time period of 160 years to grow to that number, which considering the relatively tiny recruitment pool and the extraordinarily high standards for aspirants to meet, it is a stunning testament to the ability of the Legion to select suitable candidates and the success rates of gene seed once implanted. They were, of course, one of the smallest of the Legion as Astartes, although their unique talents were such a potent force multiplier that numbers alone cannot account for their potential combat strength. In the aftermath of the Council of Nekia and the Emperor's forbidding of the usage of their powers, the Legion withdrew significantly. While they would, of course, still remain engaged with the Crusade and prosecuted their wars by entirely mundane means, it was rare in the period of 001 M31 to 004 M31 that they would undertake any deployments that would send them far from Prospero, where Magnus had withdrawn to for the entirety of this time. This, of course, meant that, when the wolves bade at their door, the overwhelming majority of the Legion was present upon the homeworld, answering the summons of their primarch readily and rapidly. As with all things to do with the Great Crusade and the heresy, there was no absolute here. It is historical fact that the bulk of the Legion perished during the Doom of Prospero, with such official estimates that existed, putting their remaining number at, yes, 1000. Attempt number again. While, yes, several thousand more Astartes were stationed far from Prospero during the Crusade, many of the circles were hunted to extinction rapidly in the aftermath of the burning by agents of the Ligio Custodes and the Divisio Telepathica, many having little inkling into the reasons for their purgation until it was far too late. While the case of the Thousand Sons had, prior to the Istvan atrocity, appeared to have been considered settled by the Imperium, their reemergence under the banners of the traitor Warmaster put paid this assumption entirely. Quite how this was managed is a tale almost insane in its telling, and for that to be related, and indeed the tale of the burning of Prospero itself, one must rest and recuperate. Until then, Ave Imperator Gloria in Excelsis Terra. Otherwise, please like, subscribe, comment, let me know your feedback, and as ever, thank you very much for watching.