 The 9th Legion was not alone in a metamorphosis upon its reunification with its Primarch. Although it must be noted that the change wrought by the Angel's presence is stunningly marked when held against other examples within the Legion as a starty. All changed to some degree, although many had their characters simply tempered and honed by the hands of their genesires. By way of example, the 4th Legion, Iron Warriors, 14th Legion Death Guard, and 16th Legion Lunawolves, all had, for want of perhaps a better phrase, their natures refined by their Primarchs, who took previously existing structures and cultures and enhanced what were already to them excellent qualities in a force of arms. The 9th ranks amongst those legions, as the 5th Legion White Scars and 17th Word Bearers, as those to whom the coming of the Primarch was a revelation in identity, operational structure, and indeed, character. The Astartes of the late Crusade simply could not have been more different from those who dusted off from the Wastes of Terra to reclaim the galaxy in the Emperor's name, and this is a topic that requires a deeper exploration. Know then, that this is a record of the tactics, stratagems, and operational structures of the 9th Legion Blood Angels. The early days of the 9th were marked by a severe deviation from the strictures of the Principia Bellicosa, as during the days of the Unification Wars, those within the early Divisio Militaris, muttered that it would have been inaccurate to refer to the 9th as an army in any traditional definition. The Legion, as it prosecuted the wars of the Emperor upon Terra, was formed almost entirely of gigantic massed infantry companies, with extremely little in the way of specialized support or advanced weaponry. Indeed, the arms born by the Legion were noted for their brute simplicity, and with no small measure of relief for imperial logisticians, lack of need of supply, as few within the armies of unity wished to treat with the ghoulish corpse-eaters with the faces of angels. These latter hunger for the dead of their battlefields had an additional effect of being a severe impediment to the imposition of any sort of discipline within the Legion, as its seemingly ingrained Manic Bloodlust, or Red Thirst, overtook warriors as soon as the first shots had been fired. The structure of the Legion, despite the size of its companies, became as such incredibly decentralized, as tactics and strategies were developed on a company or even squad level, owing to the apparent impossibility of coordinating such a bloodthirsty Legion upon the battlefield. Stirred in personalities rose quickly to positions of command, by virtue of their will in combating or embracing the Red Thirst, and how much control they could exert over their own warriors when the time came. Necessity bred a command cadre of only the hardest and most often brutal members of the Legion, more akin to warlords than Legion Centurions, but necessary nonetheless, for this was still one of the Legion's astarties and a need of tempering, if possible. The general discomfort and distance of the other Unity-era armies and the lack of divisio-militarist oversight led to an interesting situation for the Ninth Legion, one that provided few impediments to the aberrant aspects of their character. There was no real attempt to reign in the prominent genetic defect that was manifest in the Red Thirst, nor the practice of Anthropophagy brought upon by an overactive Omophagiate land. But this was allowed to continue for decades, however, was not simply a quirk of logistics, of not fighting in full view, but instead what simply has to have been an unspoken complicity from those within Imperial Command to the worst excesses of the Ninth, both from the Divisio and the Emperor himself. The Master of Mankind had shown no hesitation in times past, in exterminating those of his creations he had deemed deviant. However horrific the nature of the Ninth was to the Imperium, it was nonetheless accepted, for they wore it as openly as any of their Legion cousins. The Early Legion, as noted in a previous record, marked those decades with bloodshed almost unparalleled and a fury unknown to any other Legion save perhaps the 12th Legion warhounds. But where the engagements of the latter were marked by wanton savagery and butchery, the Ninth, for all its bloodthirst, had a cold and callous disregard for the slaughters they enacted, born it seemed of a casual disdain for all life, be it Xenos, mutant or human. The swollen companies of the Ninth were herded onto the battlefield to annihilate, stalking the carnal aftermath to consume both the memories of the foe and, horrifically, the recollections of their own fallen. In such experiences lay excellent value for the Astartes who supped upon the flesh of their dead comrades, but it was not a practice to inculcate anything other than utter revulsion in those who beheld it. Sanguinius was to temper all of this and impose onto his new Legion a new structure to better suit the needs of the Great Crusade and the Ninth itself. Turning to the Principia Bellicosa for guidance for the first time in its history, the new Blood Angels reorganized, forming the swollen subdivisions of earlier years into two hundred new companies of approximately three hundred warriors each, which by the latter years of the Great Crusade had increased to three hundred companies of five hundred warriors each, thanks largely to the superlative efforts in Legion recruitment. Beyond this basic structure, however, large discrepancies with the Principia outlines still existed, befitting, it must be said, a Legion of this new age and with their Primarch at their fore. The Angel, fittingly, ushered in the concept of the Host, a temporary command amalgamation of several Blood Angels companies to serve in battles of campaigns where a single company would be deemed insufficient for the task. However, Sanguinius' masterwork of reorganization was to be the creation of the three spheres, a macro structure that was designed by his hand to temper the Legion's red thirst and recast it for the good of both Legion and Imperium. The third and outermost sphere encompassed the rank and file estartes of the Blood Angels, driven to war by their superiors and knowing existence marked by battle and orders. They were granted, at the behest of their Primarch, indulgent time to learn, craft, and hone the better arts of humanity, allowing these warriors to not only be the core of the Legion's wars, but also its beating cultural heart. The simple discipline of the line was reinforced by rigorous application to scholarship and art, to better, by combination, stave off the hunger that gnawed at all. This sphere is notable for having little in the way of distinction by rank or role, but when such honors were handed out, they were held on to with a fierce devotion for the singularity of talent they represented. The second sphere were the commanders and officers of the Legion. To them lay the burden of the execution of the Angels' will, directing the third sphere in battle, conducting the strategies of the Legion, and advising each other with the soundest possible judgment. While the options of craft and art that lay open to the third sphere were theirs to master too, the second sphere were noted for pursuing several at once and were expected to master many disciplines within their lifetimes, as opposed to the rank and file who typically would devote their lives to a single calling, be it sculpture, prose, poetry, or music. The first sphere was quite literally the Legion's innermost circle. Dubbed the immortals by their Legion brothers, these blood Angels were not beholden to any one company, but were instead the guards and servants of the Primarch himself, specialized formations and officers directed by the Angels' own hands. Their names upon ascension to this sphere would be stripped from them, assuming a new identity to better enact the Primarch's will. The first sphere was formed entirely of distinct orders with specialized purposes, the most well-known and visible being the Sanguinary Guard, the life wards of the Angel himself, sworn to protect his body with their very lives. These Ikisat, by their Legion name, would on rare occasions be deputized to a Legion commander for both additional protection and to better enact Sanguinius' will. Similar in role, if not in aspect, with the Crimson Paladins, or Keruvim, guardians of the Angel's Sanctums, and reapers of his bloody justice upon the field of battle. While the Sanguinary Guard were famous for taking to the air with their master, with the use of mastercrafted Astarty's jump packs, the Paladins were often seen at the fore of the Legion's Terminator elite, utilizing tactical dreadnought armor to form an unshakable bulwark upon the battlefield. The Burning Eyes, also known as the Ophanim, were the opposite. Never seen upon the battlefield, these Agents stalked the Legion clandestinely, on the lookout for marked deviation from the Primarch's teachings that would, inevitably it seemed, lead some warriors to descend into the deepest hungers of the Red Thirst. Referred to Darkly as the Angel's Shame, they were the most sinister aspect of the Reformed Blood Angels, a wholly necessary but no less bitter part of it, formed to police the Ninth's very worst fears. Lastly, the Angels' Tears were an exclusively combat-orientated order, utilizing weaponry commonly seen in destroyer cadres of other legions. The reason for their being in the First Order is twofold, first being Sanguinius' open hatred for the wanton destruction of destroyer cadres in general, and the discipline which the Angel demanded those formations use their prescribed weaponry. Similar to his brother Vulcan of the 18th Legion Salamanders in this capacity, the Angel abhorred unchecked destruction, and as such kept such things very close to his chest. The spheres allowed for a rigid and strict division of command hierarchy throughout the Legion, as command could only be attained by warriors moving not only through the mundane ranks, but also through the metamorphosis, allegorical, though such a word is, of moving through the spheres. While this gave the Blood Angels a hierarchy far more rigid than many of their fellow legions, it was seen as a necessary trade-off by Sanguinius, for the strict discipline it imposed on what had been a Legion severely lacking in that regard, and served to far better temper the predations of the Red Thirst. The specter of a breakdown in authority upon the battlefield, caused by a, say, sudden or large volume of officer casualties, was mitigated by the Ninth maintaining a far larger than prescribed amount of highly trained junior officers, all ready to take the place of a superior should they fall. On the battlefield, authority was expected to be followed without any question or hesitation, and orders violated only under the most extreme of circumstances. Not only would such violations be punished with maximum severity, it was also seen by the warriors of the Legion as a grave sin against their gene sire and his work, for so beloved was the Primarch for the changes he had wrought upon his Legion, that all Astartes had come to believe in the work with a passion that bordered on that of the zealot. This rigidity of command served to channel this furor, as every Blood Angel knew exactly from whence the command would come. The Angel's will was rendered incarnate upon the battlefield, flowing downwards through a meticulous command structure, from the Lord commanders to the captains to the sergeants of the line. Clarity, this allowed, was spoken off highly by even the Terran veterans of the Legion, and earned the Ninth the respect of their similarly rigid cousins in the Thirteenth Legion Ultramarines and Third Legion Emperor's Children. The martial qualities of the commanders of the Blood Angels were often highlighted by several unique officers within the Legion. Those in command of a particular host were known by the title of Arkhine, instead of the common Praetor, while also holding the title of Dominion for a particular company. Lower down the ranks, the junior officers of the Angels were divided between the powers that commanded the rank and file, and the virtues who stood out by sheared into their talent in one aspect of their war-making or another. These titles were seemingly deliberately esoteric, invoking the Seraphic hosts of older cathoric scriptures. But by being known by their personal focuses, say, Arkhines of Wisdom, Powers of the Blade, Virtue of the Hunt, they served each of the Astartes as marks of distinction, ever-present reminders of their own abilities and the potential for those below them to conquer the devils of their worst natures, and rise above their own horrible hungers. Upon the field of battle, the Legion of Old had been recast while retaining its inherent strength. While the Revenant Ninth had simply crushed the foe under mass close infantry assault, the Blood Angels had honed their bloodlust that drove them to take the Blade to the enemy. They were now a dualist's weapon as opposed to a sledgehammer. The 300 companies of the Legion were primarily outfitted thus, to commit rapidly to orbital drop and large-scale assault operations, with a speed designed to overwhelm a foe. Infantry was still arrayed for close combat, and all Legion vehicles had a marked predilection for speed, allowing them to support the Legion in rapid strike and linebreaker engagements. The Ninth, despite its size and undoubtable prowess, lacked the tactical flexibility of their numerical competitor, the Thirteenth Legion Ultramarines. The oft-noted absence of heavier armor, static artillery, or defensive equipment would have seen them ill-cast for a protracted campaign, although given the dispositions of the Legion as a startys in the latter years of the Great Crusade, such a thing was rarely looked upon as a weakness. For other legions were highly adept in areas the Blood Angels were not, and could readily be called upon to make up for any strategic deficiency. To compliment their penchant for the shock engagement, the Legion boasted one of the largest and most powerful fleets of the Legion as a startys. At over 300 capital ships, it was a fleet to scour sectors, and many of these heavy cruisers or battleships were additionally arrayed with mass drivers for far more punishing orbital bombardments, or expanded drop pod batteries and launch bays. Where this fleet was found lacking was in its escort wings, with the Ninth Legion possessing little in the way of fast frigates. The 600 or so sub-capital ship combat classes were primarily slower-moving gunboats that kept pace with their larger charges, designed to simply provide a firepower screen as the battleships pulverized the enemy from orbit and discharged their a startys payloads into the heart of the reeling foe. The singular focus of the Blood Angels towards a single strategic paradigm allowed them to become unparalleled masters at it, but their tactical shortfalls were clear. Though they trusted their a startys brethren to help compliment these, history has proven that such faith was sadly and tragically misplaced. At the outbreak of the Great Heresy, the 120,000 a startys of the Blood Angels represented one of the largest of the legions, eclipsed only by the Ultramarines and Fourth Legion Iron Warriors. Their intake still primarily came from the moon of Sanguinius' home, Baal Secundus, retained at its original pre-industrial level of development at the express desire of the Angel himself. However, on the larger world of Baal Primus, the Mechanicum of Anvilus Forge had wrought extreme change, turning the mineral-rich, wholly toxic world into a base of operations whose output rivaled that of many minor forge worlds, all of it solely for the use of the Legion. Additionally, intake from the feral worlds of Safe and Canopus complimented this, providing the Blood Angels with a highly robust and consistent source of a startys to replenish casualties and expand the Legion further. With both its human and material supply entirely under its own purview, its size and reputation placing it firmly in the highest tier of the Legionnaires, and its unshakable loyalty to the Emperor and his Imperium, a simply undeniable truth, the Blood Angels represented perhaps one of the most singular threats to the machinations of the arch-traitor Horus Lupercow. Their rage would severely damage or shatter almost any of his traitorous legions if faced one-on-one, and he could simply not leave Sanguinius unchecked upon his march to Terra. Plans were drawn up, many focusing on isolating the individual hosts to be destroyed piecemeal, denying the Legion a chance to unify, but the risks inherent in this sat ill with Horus. It was perhaps unsurprisingly the conspiracies of Lorgar Aurelion, primarch of the 17th Legion word-bearers that would draw Horus' eye as his demagogic brother spoke of a grand trap that would be set in the Cygnus Cluster. That, I am almost relieved to say, is a tragedy that must be committed to a record upon another occasion. Until such dread tidings. Ave Imperator. Gloria in Excelsis Terra. If you'd like to support the channel with some merchandise, my very first t-shirts are up for sale on tspring.com forward slash oculus imperia. Join the channel on discord as well, a link to all of this will be in the description below.