 I must take note here, at the outset, that the first Legion are, with the exception of the 20th, the most inscrutable, secretive, and, for a starator, damn right, maddening formation within the Legion's astartes to examine. Their obfuscation was a deliberate act, both in keeping with their hallowed traditions, and also it is clear to turn unwanted eyes from their inner workings. While it has to be acknowledged that this served them extremely well during the Horus Heresy, it is nonetheless an issue when it comes to the chronicling of their martial temperament and military record. One endeavors, as one always does, and the records I have at my disposal are many, but it must be understood that we are within this record dealing with the most enigmatic of the Loyalist legions, and that the information contained herein should be considered of suspect provenance and verity. That all being said, know then that this is a record of the tactical disposition, command structure, and operational preferences of that most lethal of the Emperor's Astartes forces, the first Legion Dark Angels. While all of the Legion's astartes were initially modeled structurally on the military tenants laid out in the Principia Bellicosa, the organization of the Dark Angels as a formation predated the authoring of that Terrant Home by a substantial degree. Indeed it was by their hand and their experience that the vast amount of the Principia's doctrines were shaped. For the first Legion, as they were then, were the original testbed for a disciplined and modern transhuman military force. It was, if history is anything to go by, one of their initial remits, to be the weapon the Emperor wielded in order to firmly establish its capabilities and limits. Through the combat experience they garnered in the Unification Wars, the Solar Reclamation, and the early decades of the Great Crusade, the strictures of what made an Astartes Legion were laid down, refined, and perfected by the hands and blood of the first. We can tell our Robute Gulliman, the Primarch of the 13th Legion, Ultramarines, as one of the greatest crafters of Astartes combat Doctrina, but in the first we see the first full gestation of that. Some, amongst my order, consider their early grandmasters to be the sculptors of the Legiones and later Adeptus Astartes, and the Lord Gulliman merely a superlatively talented, naturally, reformer. The argument, albeit harder to make, well, personally these days, does hold some merit. When the Primarch of the Legion, the Lion of Caliban, returned to the Imperial fold, he made no significant changes to the operational structure of the Legion in the way many of his brothers had with theirs, merely tweaks here and there, deeming his new Dark Angels a perfectly functioning system of war. A mighty testament, indeed, to the ingenuity and practicality the Legion had built its reputation upon. There was, however, a layer to the Legion that they did not export to their cousins, and a secret of strata that was for them only, so integral to the success of the Dark Angels as to become inextricable from their very being. Stensibly, the first Legion was composed of the Berakosa-aligned chapters, companies, and squads that subdivided almost every Legion. Beneath that, or to put it better, amongst it, existed the hosts and orders of battle. Their secrets never to be revealed to those outside the Legion. The hosts and the orders existed to collect, codify, and archive the knowledge, lore, and doctrines of the Legion so that all possible military exigencies could be met, and all possible foes countered and defeated. They were a layer of organization deliberately removed from the chain of command and dispersed throughout the Legion, ensuring that should their skills ever be needed in any circumstance, there would be members of a particular host or order present to provide them. Of the two, the hosts were by far the larger in terms of a start of his members, and more general in terms of the scope of each's base knowledge. They were the precursor to the wings of the Hexagramaton, to be elaborated upon later, but served the Legion for much of its initial life. The Dark Angels, if drawn to speak on such matters, claimed the hosts were originally the idea of the Emperor himself, and while this cannot be independently verified, their origins have been utterly lost to the mists of time surrounding the unification wars, as have some of the original hosts themselves. The Legion was at this point in its history dedicated to the excision of any element of itself that it deemed superfluous or lacking, this exacting regimen of structural discipline a key component in its staggering early successes. Through records derived from Legion operations, circa 753 M40, some 40 years before horological logs record the official beginning of the Great Crusade, the original hosts of the Legion were as follows. The host of crowns, whose name likely lent itself to the first informal cognomen of the Legion, the uncrowned princes, were a veteran corps specializing in vanguard line-breaking operations, and undertaking the honor duels between army champions that were common in the warfare of Age of Shrife, Irretera. The crowns dominated the early years of the Legion, but their prevalence would gradually give way as the numbers of the first swelled, birthing the host of blades, whose growing mastery of infantry squad tactics would be the foundational tenets of the Legion tactical squad as laid out within the Principia Bellicosa. While armoured warfare strategies were similarly being pioneered by the host of Iron, whose startes would utilize everything from the very first Legion as a startes vehicles to centuries or even millennia old patterns of machine that had outlived the Age of Shrife. Those of the host of fire would lurk in the Legion's shadow, forming a rudimentary but incredibly effective intelligence apparatus, and giving rise to the first of the Legion's soon to be feared interrogator consoles. While their opposite in both character and role, the host of bones served the Legion as reverts, drawn from the bloodthirsty tribes of the Scandic peoples, and unleashed whenever the Legion acquired a foe to not simply be defeated, but utterly and completely broken. The host of stone were responsible for the nurturing of the Legion's siege cadres, both for attack and defence, while the host of wind took to the field of battle in the lightest of armour and the fastest of jet bikes the Emperor could furnish them with, earning them much in the way of praise for their valorous assaults, and earning a casualty count to match. The host of the void, with the last major host to form from the early Legion, being as it was dedicated to both teleport and orbital assault, as well as shockboarding actions of enemy vessels, stations, and arcologies. Skills the Legion would only need once the Emperor's eyes had been cast to the stars. References to one final host remain, oblique though they may be. The host of pentacles, a seemingly deliberately buried experiment the Legion had undertaken to establish the first Legion as Astartes battle-psychers. Its history is dogged with redacted actions, obscure even by the standards of a Legion dedicated to obfuscation, but it would appear that the early host attempted to meld psychic arcana torn from the forbidden archives of some of Terra's war witch covens, with the biological supremacy of the Astartes form to questionable success. What can be established is that the first grandmaster of the Legion was to order the host's dissolution after the ceiling of the Black Gate in 810 M30, a mere 12 years into the Great Crusade. Other hosts would come and go, the majority simply becoming incorporated into others as the campaign experience dictated. The host of pentacles is an example, however, of the Legion decidedly acknowledging that an aspect of their expertise was deemed critically flawed, and thus to be delegated to two more specialized formations, such as the admittedly small 15th Legion, Thousand Sons, and the admittedly far less powerful Divisio Telepathica. It speaks to the pragmatism of the early Legion that the command cadre were willing to simply admit to failures, as the final action of the pentacles must have represented. Those that survived would only strengthen, however, just as the Legion had intended, becoming more and more adept at their chosen dedication. Recruitment was both straightforward and complicated at the same time, depending on the host and question. Superlative skills and experience were quite naturally the watchword, but the tenants by which each selected their aspirants varied wildly, and changed with each coming new master, predilections of the new merging with the traditions laid down by the past. Each host followed the same administrative arrangement, structured from the master, to the marshals, to the initiates, all of whom were organized into roughly asymmetrical cells to be seeded throughout the chapters. All owed their loyalty to their sergeants and captains, yes, but also to their marshals and masters, and only through a melange of situational context and traditions could a chain of command be established. In other formations, this could have easily resulted in a completely broken mess of clashing authorities and confused structures, but it is a demonstration, if one was ever needed, of both the grit of the Legion's character and its dedication to purity of purpose. By 830, M30, the new term had entered the Legion's lexicon for how it referred to the hosts, the hexagramaton, an ancient Terran term loosely transliterated into low Gothic as the Six Divine Ways. The hexagramaton and the hosts were to be where the lion, upon his reunification with his gene sons, was to make his greatest and most visible changes. The primarch, as unearingly practical as the first had been at their founding, was seeking to redirect what was now apparently a directionless Legion, the full history of which can be elucidated upon in my previous record, without denigrating the superlative achievements that the Legion had earned. The hosts would remain, although they would not be unchanged, renamed now into the wings of the Legion, with only six remaining. The Stormwing were the first and largest of these new wings, assuming duties previously held by the host of blades for expertise in infantry engagements, but now additionally in the use of mobile ordnance. The adepts of Stormwing were to form the resolute fulcrum around which battles would pivot whenever the Legion took to the field on mass. Their value lay in their ability to direct and read the flow of such mass infantry engagements, rather than in their personal skillet arms, something overlooked in other more glory hungry but deeply valued by the Dark Angels. Stormwing was one of the most difficult of the wings for initiates to ascend through the ranks of, however, for while the skill of infantry officers and even line warriors was highly praised, it was only veterans of the largest and most destructive of campaigns that were advanced to the rank of Marshal, and the most experienced of even them that progressed to the innermost circle, group of warriors who often possessed more scars than they did campaign honors. It is notable that this inner circle also included the majority of the Legion's apothecaryon, or at least members of it that were less specialized in their proclivities, essential as apothecaries were to the exact type of infantry warfare Stormwing excelled in. Amongst the various wings, they had an odd reputation for being simultaneously the most conservative and progressive, as while their inner circle was comprised exclusively of reactionary veterans, the initiate circle was constantly fluctuating. The Ironwing would succeed and combine the expertise of the hosts of Stone and Iron, dedicating themselves to the application of overwhelming Legion firepower wherever it may be needed. Nominally considered to be the siege specialists of the Dark Angels, their remit also included the armoured warfare of the Legion, the deployment and maintenance of its dreadnoughts, and all artillery operations. There was some degree of overlap with what others may consider the realm of Stormwing, as through the fusion of the two old hosts came substantial numbers of Legion line astarty squads trained in the use of heavy battlefield weaponry, breacher formations, and terminator armoured caudras. The Ironwing, by capita, fielded more suits of terminator armor than not only any formation within the Dark Angels, but within the entirety of the Legion as astarties. The wing was renowned for the hatred the Mechanicum of Mars bore them, for none of the Dark Angels outside of the most experimental of the Dreadwing were to run as roughshod over the tenets of the machine divine than the Ironwing's inner circle. Comprised almost entirely of the Legion's senior forge rights, the lords of Ironwing willingly, deliberately, and consistently modified, upgraded, and reforged technology owing to the Legion's needs, paying little to no heed to the dogma of Mars if it stood in the way of their creation of ever more effective tools of killing. They were responsible for the development and maintenance of numerous weapon and armor marks unseen in any other Legion as astarties force, such as the Plasmacasters and Artifacer Cataphractii plate of the Legion's Synobium Terminator squads. Of all the Hexagramaton, the Ravenwing were the most changed by the reforms of the Lion. Unlike the previous two discussed, they were initially formed not around any host, but an order, the Order of the Raven, a newly enshrined order militant based upon old Calibanite-mounted warfare traditions, which was then fused with the host of the Void and the host of the Wind. What remained was perhaps the most superlative mobile attack formation of any Legion, save for the riders of the 5th Legion White Scars. Masters of the Shock Assault and the Hit and Run, the Ravenwing were primarily focused on aircraft, skimmer, and jet bike assets of the Dark Angels, but paid attention to its purview over infantry elements too, for utilisation in skirmish warfare and forward reconnaissance. The somewhat vain glorious nature of the host of Wind was to persist here, largely thanks to the influences of Calibanite nightly traditions, which, while they stressed duty and self-sacrifice, were nonetheless prone to use her patience by those hungry for glory and honour. The Ravenwing sought to balance these conflicting priorities, placing its initiates at the Vanguard whenever shock assaults were called for, yes, but tempering them enough to ensure the desire to blood the foe did not lead to breakdowns in discipline. Regardless of the efforts of the Inner Circle, the majority of their initiates could still be formed from those Calibanite warriors whose hot-bloodedness won them little favour with Sterner Wings, turning instead to the Ravenwing as an arena with which to forge their destinies. It is a testament to both the Legion and the Wing that this never became a significant issue, merely a reputation that persisted past the point of what could be considered fair. The most secretive and ill-understood to history of the Wings, the Firewing were also the smallest, and possessed the least of the Hexgrammaton's battlefield presence. Formed from the cores of both the host of crowns and the host of fire, the Wing was an eclectic collection of Astartes dedicated to an altogether subtler form of warfare than their compatriots. Focusing their efforts on subterfuge, assassination, infrastructural sabotage, and terror tactics. This led to their employment of asymmetrical tactics that would vary wildly depending on operational exigencies, and required a significant amount of command, delegation, and independence to achieve properly. Firewing initiates and marshals were typically to be found in the Legion's Moritat cadres, and the more specialised of its infantry elements, including many of the Legion's champion duelists, calling back to the role the host of crowns played during the Unification Wars. Their war was on the enemy's will to fight. Their chosen target, the foes command and control structure, and nothing was considered off the table for the warriors of the Firewing. They possessed the greatest body of lore of any of the Wings, hoarding information pertaining to thousands of Xenos strains, and hundreds of unique and ancient thinking machine schematics, all held in abeyance for when the Legion would face just such a foe once more. Due to their limited numbers, such knowledge was vital, as it would permit a relatively small group of Astartes to inflect substantial damage at critical enemy weak points. They were to remain the least change of the Hexagramaton from their original foundation formations, up to and including their recruitment preferences. The Masters of the Wing eschewing Calibanite Astartes in favour of those recruited from Terra or other worlds. Most of the latter shared with the 16th Legion Sons of Horus. The Deathwing were originally formed from the severely depleted host of crowns, still recovering its losses from the disastrous Carcassarne debacle, intaking the majority of the Legion's most veteran Astartes, whose skills lay in personal combat and line-breaking operations. The new Wing took over the old host's role in this regard, but with less focus paid to honour duels that had once typified the crowns and more attention paid to their newer role, that of life wards for the Legion's high command echelons. Subsequent to their creation, it was rare indeed for a Legion preitor to not take to the field without a squad of ivory-armoured Deathwing veterans in tow, more akin to martial companions than simple bodyguards. The Wing additionally retained its frontline capacity, squads of veterans working in close coherency with their brethren from Stormwing to bolster the effectiveness of Dark Angel's infantry engagements. Deathwing's bar for entry was perhaps the most stringent of the entire Hexagramaton, and this coupled with the ravages that had so sorely depleted the host of crowns rendered them the second smallest of the Wing's numerically, but with the respect from their fellow Astartes that far outweighed their numbers alone. The sixth and final Wing of the Hexagramaton would also possess a reputation that preceded them, although it was one of an altogether darker nature. To the Dreadwing was granted the purview of annihilation, those Astartes for whom the defeat of the foe was not enough, when extermination was required. The Dreadwing embodied the Legion's most destructive tendencies, and were in many ways the purest expression of the Lion's personal Artebellum, but whose remit was great and terrible indeed. Massacres, Xeno, and Genocides, and total purgation operations, were to be handled by the Dreadwing, who were additionally charged with the management, maintenance, and deployment of the most potent, forbidden, and lethal of the Dark Angel's already largely proscribed weaponry. Formed initially from the host of Bone, itself originally drawn from the Berserker warriors of Terra's Scandic tribes, those of the Dreadwing retained some of their oldest martial traditions, but the old host's previously hotheaded temperament was dulled by the rigid honor system of the Calibanite initiates. Subsequent to the Legion's reforms, and in contrast to their reputation as remorseless butchers, the Dreadwing took on a pragmatic, if dour, character. The quintessence, perhaps, of the Legion's coldly practical approach to warfare. The bulk of the Wing was, unsurprisingly, formed by the majority of the Legion's destroyer cadres, and no few of its more untraditional moratats, apothecaries, and techmarines. Given the sheer array of complex and ancient technology, they were charged with safekeeping. They were additionally granted the honor, twisted though it was, of being the guardians of the first's least psychologically stable Castepherum, Contamptor, and Cortus Contamptor Dreadnaughts. Operating amongst and alongside the wings of the Hexgramaton were the Orders, largely unchanged by the line's reforms, but none invisible from his watchful eye. Known within the Legion as a Hecatonistica, a word descended from the ancient Terran Mycenae language to mean the Hundred Asoteric Arts, the Orders were even less visible to outsiders than the Wings were, forming the third and final layer of command within the Dark Angels. While the Wings possessed thousands if not tens of thousands of Astartes each, the Orders would often have no more than a dozen to a few dozen, charged by their order, with the possession, safeguarding, and, should the situation call for it, propagation of a specific type of martial knowledge. This could be anything from the weakness possessed by a certain Xenospho, a masterful ability with a weapon or vehicle, deep knowledge of a specific type of terrain, or lore pertaining to exploitable social systems. Whatever their concern, the Orders function similar to the Wings, spread throughout the Legion, united by no chapter and company, but by a shared subject, to come together only when their knowledge was deemed required by the members of the Order themselves. A cell of just one such Order, called a Synobium, would then form and present itself to the operational commander of a particular campaign or battle, offering their knowledge and expertise in order to affect the most utter defeat of the foe. There were hundreds of these Orders throughout the long history of the First, and some have no doubt passed into antiquity completely unrecorded due either to their own wishes or the extreme secrecy of the lore they possessed. Examples included the Order of Santallis, which concerned itself with the hated Xenos crave, or the Order of the Broken Wings, whose mastery of anti-aircraft technology and weaponry was second to none, or perhaps the Order of the Broken Claws, formed in the wake of the Second Rangdan Xenocide and forming the most complete catalog of knowledge of that particular Xenos breed, that the Legion had fought so hard to exterminate. The Order's militant were as strict with their hierarchy as the Wings, and while none operated in the same manner, all were relentless in their pursuit of an organization that would best serve the aims of both their own remit and of the Legion itself. While the Wings recruited in broad daylight and were well known for their open desire to share their knowledges and skills, the Orders were the cardinal opposites, bringing initiates in under a complex cloak of cyford messages and coded signals. Each tier that a recruit ascended to would grant them more access to the mysteries of their new society, as well as better training and likely equipment as befitted their new station. While such confidentiality would be a subject of no small amount of horror to those of other legions who were to find out about it, some even questioning how the blatantly archaic and almost spiritual practices of the Orders could possibly be aligned with the Imperial Truth, in practice it served the First Legion incredibly well, but with a caveat. While the investiture of the mysteries and their progress through an ever-shrinking circle of a specific order would lend to each Astartes an unshakable dedication to the value and importance of the knowledge she was calling to possess, it is true that such intense concealment was prone to occasional disaster. While there are no direct examples, likely a completely deliberate step by the Legion itself in its own record keeping, one finds it difficult to countenance that at no point in history was an order annihilated en masse by an especially challenging foe, or even in case of mass combat attrition events that saw the bulk of the legions simultaneously engaged. The second rangdan zenocide comes to mind. The key change to this potential issue came when the Lion was invested as high preceptor of the Order's militant, in possession of explicit knowledge of the practices, rites, traditions, and lore held by every single order in the Legion. Their totality now safeguarded by their liege, the Orders came into their own, as one of the most vital weapons the Dark Angels possessed. To be counted amongst their ranks was an honor fewer than half the Legion would ever simultaneously claim, being granted the right to mark their combat plate with a sigil of their new organization. Few indeed outside any of the Orders would ever be able to discern its ranks or purpose or nature, but it is a testament to the straightforward nature of the Dark Angels, and their ultimate deference to both knowledge and experience, that no member of an Order would ever find their offer of expertise turned down, even if they were a mere lionist artis and their recipient, a master of a wing. Given this deliberately impenetrable trifold command hierarchy, just how the Legion functioned was a topic of ceaseless confusion for outsiders, something that the Dark Angels themselves took some measure of satisfaction in. The separate strands of chapter, wing, and order do seem to clash, presenting no doubt multitude of opportunities for confused battlefield chains of command, and potential interpersonal disagreements or even feuds, but in practice it served the Legion very, very well, allowing them to continually adapt to the exigencies of the Great Crusade, and fully flourish within their role as the most dangerous of the Legion as Astartes. Indeed it was only truly possible in the first, and relied entirely on the Legion's dedication to achieving its stated aims, and its disregard for the notions of personal honor that were more prevalent in their fellow Astartes formations. While other legions would balk at the idea of the sheer quantity of symbols, ciphers, and protocols of the Dark Angels built into their command system, for the first themselves, all of this was simply a matter of context, and trust. Every battle was different, and inherent to the Astartes of the Legion was an unshakable faith in their brothers at arms, and that they could be relied upon to have the best interests of the Legion at heart. When the expertise of a member of the Wings or of the Orders was needed, their authority simply superseded that of the regular chain of command as laid out in the Principia Bellicosa. The contextual nature of this was a source of no small frustration for both other legions and their Primarchs, with the Astartes commanders of the former often feeling slighted finding themselves having to grant their command to a much lower ranking Dark Angel, and the Lions' brothers, Gilliman especially, making numerous attempts to get their stoic sibling to standardize his Legion along more straightforward lines. The Primarch of the 13th obviously did not succeed, although his brother Korax of the 19th Legion would attempt to apply a similar structure to his Legion, adapting certain aspects of the decentralized nature of the Dark Angel's command to work with the Raven Guards' cell-like field structure. It was however never a model that succeeded in any other Legion in its totality. It relied far too much on not only a complete purity of purpose, but also upon the Dark Angel's long-standing veteran corps, by far the oldest and largest in the entirety of the Legion as Astartes. While certain conflicts had reaped a bloody toll on the Legion's greatest warriors, they had at that point become a self-sustaining thing, created in the bloody wastes of Terra itself and perpetuated by a Legion that viewed the keeping and dissemination of Martial Knowledge as paramount. The Dark Angels, quite apart from their brethren in many respects, were additionally notable for possessing perhaps the most lethal arsenal of weaponry and technology of any of the Legion as Astartes, second only to the Ligio Castodes and the rest of the Imperial household and certain more powerful tagmata of the Mechanicum of Mars in its intricacies. Initially a facet of their status as the first frontline combat Legion active during the Unification Wars, the first was, after reaching full deployment strength, granted access to the Emperor's own forbidden arsenals, entrusted as his firstborn with weaponry no other non-household force was permitted to wield. Terran specifications for ancient Dark Age of Technology pattern weaponry were the hallmark of the first throughout these wars and laterally in the Great Crusade. Their secrets of manufacture shared only with the most trusted of the Legion's client Forge World, such as the Planet of Zana. It was a testament to the Bonds, the first forged with these isolated elements of the Mechanicum, and to their skills at maintaining such devices, that unstable and archaic technology could be borne by them in such quantities. Their armory would contain everything from unique and deadly ammunition variants, to patterns of tanks and battlefield armor thought lost to history, to personal armaments of unheard of destructive capabilities. Per Capita the Legion possessed more plasma weaponry than any other by a significant degree, and in designs unseen in any other Imperial formation. These indeed were merely the weaponry the Dark Angels were comfortable using openly. The sacresties of the Dreadwing, hidden chambers secreted in the depths of every Dark Angel starship, possessed even deadlier devices. Gene phages that could purge bearers of specific genomes from planetary populations, or reduce an entire species to viscous sludge. Eye-rad cleansers that could burn flesh from an organic in a heartbeat. Magma munitions that could break an entire planet into pieces from within. Psi arcana of unconscionable effect and provenance, and even weaponry that could remove its victims' quantum information from every strata of reality, annihilating them from existence and history simultaneously. The first were even by the outbreak of the Great Heresy, in possession of shackled silica anima. Artificial sentience itself deemed the purest and most base of heresy by the Mechanic of Mars, an affront to human consciousness on all levels. Their origins dating back to the Dark Age of Technology itself, these were once men of iron, abominable intelligences that had by the Unification Wars been broken and tortured to the point of containment. A secret possessed by the Iron Wing and known to few outside the upper circles of the Hexgramaton, these insane not-things were, if required, inloaded into customized Imperial automata and loosed upon the enemy as annihilators. There, mad bloodthirsty consciousnesses seeking only to destroy. These Exindio were typically wielded as a weapon of last resort only, and the deployment of them was supervised closely by the Forge Masters of Iron Wing, lest the intelligences infect or corrupt other Imperial systems. That the silica animus, the men of iron, a horror of the past that had led to the downfall of our species itself and is responsible for the loss of uncountable quadrillions of human lives, could be trusted by the Emperor to astartes. Is a testament if ever there was one of the utter faith he had in his firstborn, and to the angels' uncorruptible loyalty to the throne. By the closing years of the Great Crusade, the Dark Angels had recovered much of the strength that they had lost during the Second Rangdan Xenocide. The war had seen them suffer losses of nearly 90%, but by 005 M31, the Divisio Militaris placed their operational strength at 180,000 astartes, putting them once more in the highest tier of legions by size, along with the Ultramarines, Sons of Horus, and Word Bearers. A sheer amount of advanced weaponry, technology, and ships the Legion possessed, as well as their operational preferences and sizable veteran corps, all contributed to become substantial force multipliers, meaning the Legion's capabilities and threat far exceeded their mere numbers, even by Legion as astartes standards. Given this, as well as their role within the Crusade and the Lion's personal preferences, the Angels typically deployed in smaller detachments, often no more than a few chapters, but each possessing, thanks to the traditions and structure of the Legion, more than enough astartes from each of the wings of the Hexagramaton and the orders of the Hecatonistica to defeat essentially any foe encountered. Their fleet rivaled the Iron Warriors and the Alpha Legion in sheer size, and again, could punch well above its weight in simple tonnage. In order to support the Legion's widespread deployment, small flotillas were consistently held in an ever-moving strategic reserve. To transport fresh recruits from Caliban and restock arms and armaments to various Legion elements, or to intercede when unfortunate circumstances called for more's fleet support than had been anticipated, the Angels additionally operated scout fleets, usually under the purview of Ravenwing or Firewing, and quite similar to those traditionally overseen by the Ravenguard and White Scars legions, to seek out potential targets for either Imperial compliance operations or Xenos purgation campaigns. Due to its far-flung nature and diligently maintained supply lines, the First Legion eschewed the practice of maintaining any significant holdings or fives galaxy-wide, focusing its efforts and intentions on Caliban and Grammarie and a few other scattered fortresses. Even its use of client forages of the Mechanicom of Mars was quite limited, concentrated on but a few trusted worlds like Xana in order to avoid the scrutiny of the Martian Synod, the vast majority of which would have lightly called for the Legion's blood and censure should it have become aware of just what the First Legion possessed within its arsenals. When the Warmaster Horace Lupercal sought to make his move, he did so with the confidence that one of his greatest threats, the Lion of Caliban and his Dark Angel Sons, had been removed from play to a sufficient enough degree that an easy victory for the traitors could be readily assured. Scattered to all corners of the galaxy's eastern fringe, far beyond the Imperium's borders, the First Legion were about as far from the front lines of the heresy as it was possible to be, and split besides into hundreds of detachments, often no more than 5,000 to start a strong, heavily engaged beyond the vanguard of the Crusade's most eastworldy push. By standard military logic, they were being bled hard and were sufficiently isolated from the remainder of the Imperium that they would make negligible impact on the opening stages of the heresy. Horace was, perhaps atypically in this case, sorely mistaken. It is notable that the Warmaster, despite his weariness of his Leonaan sibling, had not assayed his strength nor that of his Legion to the degree that he had believed, and that in the depths of the Galactic East, the fury of the Lion and his Dark Angels would immediately arise and pivot towards absolute vengeance. Until such a time as I am able to relate that particular chapter in history, Ave Imperator, Gloria in Excelsis Terra. Contact me or follow me on Twitter at oculusimperia. Otherwise, please like, subscribe, comment, let me know your feedback, and as ever, thank you very much for watching.