History Characters / HorusHeresyLoyalistLegions

** Those giant siege guns the Iron Warriors used to decimate the loyalists at the Drop Site Massacre? Lion won those in a war and then handed them over to Perturabo just for the asking.

* FatalFlaw: His aloofness and inability to relate to other people. The Lion allows the Imperium to treat Caliban as they would any other world brought into compliance where practically every other Primarch bar Angron (in his case through lack of choice in the matter) had their homeworld's culture preserved, without giving Caliban's people a say in the matter, then banishes Luther and a large fraction of his Legion to their homeworld without explanation. This predictably results in bitterness from many parties stewing over into outright rebellion and directly leads to the Fallen declaring Caliban's independence, with Lion seemingly none the wiser to how Luther and those under his command felt about his actions until the moment they fired upon him. His ego and sense of pride also frequently provoke him into unwise actions.

* HorribleJudgeOfCharacter: Acknowledged to be one in-universe. For all his tactical brilliance, the Lion's horrible at reading people and discerning if they could be trusted or not. He relied on Luther to make those judgements for him until Luther was "exiled" back to Caliban.

* DropTheHammer: His weapon is a power mace made from super-heavy stone.

* DropTheHammer: His favorite weapon is Forgebreaker, a thunder hammer that was originally a gift from Fulgrim. Horus later makes it a gift to Perturabo.

* DropTheHammer: His weapon is a hammer in many varieties. He used a pair of blacksmith's hammers to fend off a Dark Eldar attack on his world, and throughout the Great Crusade he used a thunder hammer named, quite obviously, Thunderhead. During the Drop Site Massacre, he wields Dawnbringer, which was originally a gift for Horus [[spoiler:and which lets him get around teleportation blocks]]. [[spoiler: After his resurrection on Nocturne, he forges a third hammer called Urdrakule ("The Burning Hand") and wields it on his journey to Terra. Urdrakule is the most formidable of Vulkan's hammers, strong enough to smash one of Ferrus Manus' metal hands and spittings arcs of flame.]]

The White Scars are the Fifth Legion, a horde of warriors on jetbikes who prefer to operate out on the fringes of the Imperium. The Fifth Legion was originally known as the "Star Hunters" and were one of the first Legiones Astartes to be deployed, having fought alongside the Thunder Warriors during the Unification. Both on Terra and during the early days of the Great Crusade, they were used as scouts, exploring and mapping hostile territories as well as harassing the enemy ahead of the Emperor's main forces. The Legion eventually found Chogoris and their primarch, Jaghatai Khan. The former Star Hunters were quickly assimilated into Chogorian culture, notably because the Chogorians' way of way was quite similar to their one. The Legion was subsequently renamed the "White Scars", though they usually refer to themselves as the "ordu of Jaghatai".\\\
Jaghatai respected the Emperor but disagreed with him on many topics, leading him to take the White Scars out to the fringes of the Imperium and fight alien threats instead of bringing human worlds to heel. As a result, they were ignored by the Imperium at large, which suited them just fine. They did entertain a longstanding friendship with the Luna Wolves, and Jaghatai was personally close to Horus, Sanguinius, and Magnus. When the Horus Heresy broke out, Jaghatai was so far out of the loop that he initially didn't know who to trust or side with; both sides were actively trying to recruit him. After learning the truth and stopping a pro-Horus coup, Jaghatai decided to remain loyal to the Imperium. The White Scars subsequently spent most of the Heresy on a campaign of raids and rearguard actions to keep the Traitors distracted and off balance. Eventually, they managed to reach Terra, participating in the Sol System's defence during the Solar War and the Siege of Terra.\\\

* BlackVikings: The White Scars are mostly [[SpaceRomans space Mongolians]], with the insinuation that the initial settlement on Chogoris ''really was'' comprised of settlers from Mongolia. Up through the Horus Heresy, they had plenty of the more diverse Terran recruits, both leftovers from their founding days and as reinforcements. Case in point, the man who would become Torguhn Khan was born with the name Haren Svensellen.

* CultureClash: The White Scars suffered from this notably more than other Legions, since Chogorian culture was quite different compared to the Imperium's. Terran legionaries and staff in general were notably frustrated by how the Chogorians remained committed to their own methods of warfare, and the different way they understood the universe compared to standard Imperial practice. The warrior lodges easily infiltrated the legion through these Terrans..

* TheFettered: Their approach to the use of psykers; where the likes of the Thousand Sons would push their powers to their limits and beyond, the Scars instead preached restraint and moderation for their Stormseers. Jaghatai in turn introduced this principle to the Librarius along with Sanguinius, aiming to have regulated Librarians who could ''safely'' use their abilities.

* LockedOutOfTheLoop: The White Scars were ordered to cleanse the Chondax system of Orks, which combined with warp storms and the Alpha Legion's secretly prolonging the campaign, isolated the legion from the galaxy and left them ignorant of the Horus Heresy for a long time. When contradictory messages started coming in, the White Scars were almost swayed to Horus' side because of their ignorance of his actions and naturally trusting him more than the Emperor.

* TookaLevelinBadass: Partially, as a result of his actions in ''Scars.'' The Brotherhood of the Storm grows in size, he becomes a counsellor to his Primarch, and leads some of the Legions's deadliest missions during the Heresy. [[spoiler:However, in personal combat his augmetics hinder him, to the point that he dubs them "shackles".]]

* TheDreaded: Sanguinius is unambiguously one of the most heroic of Primarchs, but his martial prowess earns him both awe and fear in equal measure. Leman Russ admits that he's one of the few combatants he won't be able to bring to heel, Konrad Curze doesn't want to take his chances fighting someone of his caliber, and Horus, even after fully embracing Chaos, sends him away in the beginning of the Heresy to die via daemonic ambush instead of personally going after him.

!!Tylos Rubio
A Battle Brother of the 13th Legion's 21st Company and a former Librarian of the Ultramarines Legion forced to resign his position after the Council of Nikaea. Recruited by Nathaniel Garro during the Battle of Calth to become one of the first Knight-Errants of Malcador, the basis of the future Grey Knights and the Inquisition.

For more information from the rule books, go [[Characters/Warhammer40000AstartesChapters here]].

* CruelAndUnusualDeath: Horus does not make his death easy, or painless. He first smashes Sanguinius into the deck so hard that it crushes one of his wings and breaks a bunch of bones. Then he hits him with his mace and sends him flying, ripping open the previous injury Angron had caused and inflicting a second, even worse wound. When Sanguinius still manages to feebly fight back, Horus throws him down and beats him so brutally that his bones are pulverized, his organs are smashed to pulp, and half the skin on his face is torn off. By the time Horus fatally crushes his neck and spine, Sanguinius is already drowning in his own blood and can't even muster any final words.
* DeadGuyOnDisplay: After his death, Horus has his broken, beaten corpse crucified, his arms and wings outstretched, black spikes nailing his body and limbs to the wall, and blood pooling below amidst white feathers.

* MessianicArchetype: Played surprisingly straight.

* AllegoricalCharacter: [[Invoked]] [[WordOfGod As confirmed in the Author's notes for]] ''Warhawk'', Sigismund is one for the Imperium as a whole. He's initially devoted to the Imperial Truth during the Crusade, but has to grapple with his burgeoning faith in the Emperor over the course of the Heresy. His acceptance of what he will have to become if mankind is to survive the Siege of Terra is, coupled with Keeler rallying refugees to point suicidal charges to bog down Traitor forces, the moment where the Imperium of the Great Crusade dies and the Imperium of the modern era is born.

* AllegoricalCharacter: [[Invoked]][[WordOfGod As confirmed in the Author's notes for]] ''Warhawk'', Sigismund is one for the Imperium as a whole. He's initially devoted to the Imperial Truth during the Crusade, but has to grapple with his burgeoning faith in the Emperor over the course of the Heresy. His acceptance of what he will have to become if mankind is to survive the Siege of Terra is, coupled with Keeler rallying refugees to point suicidal charges to bog down Traitor forces, the moment where the Imperium of the Great Crusade dies and the Imperium of thee modern era is born.

* RuleOfSymbolism: [[spoiler:Sigismund's duel with Khârn is the moment where the Imperium of the crusade ends and the Imperium of modern ''[=40K=]'' begins - throughout the siege, he's resisted giving into to fanaticism for the sake of winning against the traitors. His acceptance of what kind of faith-driven monster he needs to be to win the fight sets the stage for the rest of the Imperium to join him in the coming madness.

* AllegoricalCharacter: {{Invoked}}[[WordOfGod As confirmed in the Author's notes for]] ''Warhawk'', Sigismund is one for the Imperium as a whole. He's initially devoted to the Imperial Truth during the Crusade, but has to grapple with his burgeoning faith in the Emperor over the course of the Heresy. His acceptance of what he will have to become if mankind is to survive the Siege of Terra is, coupled with Keeler rallying refugees to point suicidal charges to bog down Traitor forces, the moment where the Imperium of the Great Crusade dies and the Imperium of thee modern era is born.

* NoSympathyForGrudgeholders: Corax berates him for being vindictive to an Iron Hands commander who has searched his ship before. Justified, as for one, war is no time for grudges, and for other, the man was just doing his job.

The very first Legion, the Dark Angels are one of the most revered of the Space Marine Legions, though they also are one of the most aloof. The Dark Angels were the first of the Space Marines to be created and deployed, before anyone had even heard of Space Marines or the Legiones Astartes. At that time, they were known as the Emperor's "Angels of Death". Present since the earliest days of the Great Crusade, the Dark Angels had to build all the battle doctrines of the Space Marines from scratch, learning how to excell in all aspects of warfare because of their "wings", each specialized in a different style of combat. For this reason, they struggled for a while to figure out their identity until the Emperor sent them to the far-flung world of Caliban. There they found their Primarch Lion El'Jonson and an Arthurian culture of knightly ideals which they were quick to adopt.\\\

In the Lion, the Dark Angels found a great military commander who would lead them to even more glorious victories. However, when El'Jonson sent his second-in-command Luther back to Caliban to build up more strength yet never came back, a schism occurred. On Caliban, Luther grew increasingly bitter and discontented and turned his recruits into secessionists who were loyal only to Caliban. Many of them eventually turned to Chaos. Meanwhile, the Horus Heresy was raging across the galaxy. The Lion and most of his legion were trapped behind the Ruinstorm, where they became locked in a grinding war against the Night Lords before joining Guilliman's Imperium Secundus for a time. Lion El'Jonson is currently on course for Terra, seeking to relieve the besieged Throneworld of the Imperium.\\\

As the first organized Astartes force, the Dark Angels had to develop the basics of waging war as a Legion. They eventually developed six hosts (or "wings") known as the Hexagrammaton, each specialized in one style of warfare. These allowed the Dark Angels to become a JackOfAllTrades Legion, capable of waging many different kinds of war with equal levels of skill. As the I Legion, they were also entrusted with a vast arsenal of archaeotech and proscribed weaponry that often gave them a critical edge. The influence of the Order caused them to adopt the knightly culture of Caliban, and the Lion established a relatively egalitarian relationship with his Astartes, referring to them as his "little brothers" instead of his sons. On the other hand, the Dark Angels were also aloof toward the other Legions, believing that as the First Legion, they deserved to be preeminent. This aloofness was amplified by the Lion, who was himself solitary by nature and given to standing apart from others. The Dark Angels wear black armour, often decorated with elaborate heraldry.\\\

* AHouseDivided: The Angels left on Caliban are slowly going traitor, while the ones with Lion remain steadfastly loyal. Even then, the higher-ups on Caliban suffer from an unusually high degree of scheming and backstabbing because of their conflicting loyalties: there are Imperial loyalists, the secessionists who want an independent Caliban, the worshippers of the Ouroboros, and a few who claim to be loyal to the Imperium but have other motivations driving them.
* HunterOfMonsters: Back on Caliban, the knightly orders which were later absorbed into Dark Angels were hunting the beasts living there. The Lion spent ten years by himself hunting these beasts in the deep forests of the planet, and to this day his personality and worldview are centered around his identity of "monster hunter".

* JackOfAllTrades: Their initial mission statement was pretty much "be Space Marines", which resulted in them acquiring proficiency in all aspects of warfare without really excelling in any.

** This famously came to a head at the Dulan campaign, where the Lion promised Russ the opportunity to slay the Tyrant of Dulan. The Lion waited for some time. Russ, distracted by handling [[DarkSecret other matters]], couldn't get to it in a timely manner, causing the Lion to take the matter into his own hands and slain the Tyrant himself. On the heels of a personal tragedy, and furious at the break of the Lion's word, Russ was enraged and fought the Lion in a duel that lasted three days, the Lion and Russ trading grievances and criticism. Eventually, Russ started to laugh at the absurdity of the situation, pissing the Lion off enough to punch him out cold. This duel went, in a sense, unfinished, and was the start of the tradition of Space Wolves and Dark Angels starting ritual duels whenever they met. It was a tradition the Lion and Russ both participated in, in the years hence, though not with each other until after the Siege of Terra. This tradition remained in place for more than ten millennia.

* FatalFlaw: His aloofness and inability to relate to other people. The Lion allows the Imperium to treat Caliban as they would any other world brought into compliance where practically every other Primarch bar Angron (in his case through lack of choice in the matter) had their homeworld's culture preserved, without giving Caliban's people a say in the matter, then banishes Luther and a large fraction of his Legion to their homeworld without explanation. This predictably results in bitterness from many parties stewing over into outright rebellion and directly leads to the Fallen declaring Caliban's independence, with Lion seemingly none the wiser to how Luther and those under his command felt about his actions until the moment they fired upon him.

* IAmAMonster: Before the Emperor found him, he would sometimes wonder whether he's just not another of the great beasts of Caliban.

* LonersAreFreaks: One of the Lion's defining traits is his distant personality and inability to relate to humanity or even his Legion, due to his prodigious intelligence and singularly powerful nature as a Primarch. This is lampshaded by Lion himself, who compared himself to a lion which was told to guard an anthill, noting that no matter how well-trained or well-meaning said lion is, it would never be able to truly understand the ants placed under its protection, just as vice versa the ants will never understand it. Lion in general finds the mighty Beasts of Caliban which he had slain more relatable than most human beings.

* MasterOfYourDomain: In his Primarch novel, a Khrave, a species of telepathic enslavers, digs into his mind to dominate him. The Khrave only sees what the Lion wants him to see in his brain. In fact, the Lion proves to be too controlled over his own psyche to the point of being immune to the Khrave's influence, and only let it in to peek back into the Khrave's mind as a kind of psychic interrogation.

* FleshVersusSteel: Ironically, Ferrus Manus is on the former's side, reasoning that while the cybernetics do make the marines stronger, it also weakens their willpower and their reliance on their own natural abilities. He plans to abolish the practice of increasing cybernetization after the Great Crusade was finished, but then Fulgrim cuts his head off.

* InformedAbility: Many times in the early Horus Heresy books we are told that Ferrus was a great military mind. Horus himself says in ''Vengeful Spirit'' that Ferrus is the one primarch who understands, eats and breathes war like he does. We end up seeing nothing of this and his most well-known battle is, off course, his reckless assault at Istvan V, which partially lead to the Dropsite Massacre. Many of the tactician and strategist aspects he was known for ended up going to Lion El'Jonson in later stories. He apparently was enough of a strategist to be placed in command of one of the three main thrusts of the Great Crusade (Horus and the Emperor commanded the other two) but that may have simply been a result of him being the fourth Primarch to be found again, behind Horus, Leman Russ, and [[UnPerson the Second Primarch]]. But then again, he was the Primarch selected for overall command of the force of eight legions[[note]]one of which was delayed, three others of which were traitors[[/note]] sent to put down Horus's rebellion at Istvaan V.

* MeaningfulName: His name means Iron Hand in Latin. Along with his Space Marine chapter, the consequent repetition of this meaningfulness gets a bit silly.

* {{Troll}}: Ferrus' intimidating demeanor hid a surprisingly good humor and he would often make blunt, pointed comments that someone would take as an insult to amuse himself with getting a rise out of them. Sadly, Fulgrim's pride and increasing Slaaneshi corruption causes him to take Ferrus' jabs at face value. It's only after Ferrus' death that the Laer Blade demon allowed Fulgrim to realize that Ferrus had been trying to deflate his ego through humor.

* NotSoStoic: Like many aboard ''Sisypheum'', he doesn't keep his composure when Meduson visits them.

* RagtagBandOfMisfits: Clan Morragul as a whole is this, since it became a dumping ground forIron Hands who were unstable, insubordinate, or otherwise outcasts in the legion.

* TechnicianVersusPerformer: Firmly on the technician side of the scale, which earns them some scorn from other Legions.

* AllegoricalCharacter: [[Invoked]][[WordOfGod As confirmed in the Author's notes for]] ''Warhawk'', Sigismund is one for the Imperium as a whole. He's initially devoted to the Imperial Truth during the Crusade, but has to grapple with his burgeoning faith in the Emperor over the course of the Heresy. His acceptance of what he will have to become if mankind is to survive the Siege of Terra is, coupled with Keeler rallying refugees to point suicidal charges to bog down Traitor forces, the moment where the Imperium of the Great Crusade dies and the Imperium of thee modern era is born.

* DeadPersonConversation: Vulkan has a chat with him after his death, although it's heavily implied that "Ferrus" is actually his mounting insanity and guilt made manifest.
* DropTheHammer: Forgebreaker, his thunder hammer, and originally a gift from Fulgrim. Horus later makes it a gift to Perturabo.

* InformedAbility: Many times in early Horus Heresy books we are told that Ferrus was a great military mind. Horus himself says in ''Vengeful Spirit'' that Ferrus is the one primarch who understands, eats and breathes war like he does. We end up seeing nothing of this and his most well-known battle is, off course, his reckless assault at Istvan V, which partially lead to the Dropsite Massacre. Many of the tactician and strategist aspects he was known for ended up going to Lion El'Jonson in later stories. He apparently was enough of a strategist to be placed in command of one of the three main thrusts of the Great Crusade (Horus and the Emperor commanded the other two) but that may have simply been a result of him being the fourth Primarch to be found again, behind Horus, Leman Russ, and [[UnPerson the Second Primarch]]. But then again, he was the Primarch selected for overall command of the force of eight legions[[note]]one of which was delayed, three others of which were traitors[[/note]] sent to put down Horus's rebellion at Istvaan V.

* SacrificialLion: Despite his obvious combat prowess he died fairly early on in the Heresy, with his death mainly serving as an indication to the other Primarchs of just how serious the conflict had become.

* SmallRoleBigImpact: He dies in his second novel, but him and his death continues to have great impact on both his Legion and his brothers.
* TheSocialDarwinist: ''Massacre'' and other depictions of Medua very much paint him this way. He maintains the harsh way of life endemic to the world, reasoning that it is necessary to produce such fearsome warriors as his Legion needs. He also brought this attitude towards his own Legion, having the various companies competing for his approval.
* HunterOfMonsters: In his youth, he would wander Medusa slaying the many monsters prowling its surface.

* WeHardlyKnewYe: His main contribution to Horus Heresy is dying at Fulgrim's hands in its second great battle, in the first book he appears in.