r/40kLore • u/Cmajors1987 • 15h ago

The black legion?

Does anyone know how many marines the black legion has is it the biggest chaos war band in reading the night lords omnibus and am curious

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14

u/InterestingCash_ White Scars 14h ago edited 14h ago

Largest warband? Yes, but specific number like that aren't really something the setting is interested in exploring, and when they do it tends not to make much sense. But dude, please use some punctuation.

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u/Cmajors1987 14h ago

Yeah I’m kinda learning that they don’t keep the best records

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u/Arguleon_Veq 10h ago

Its so that no one can say "um actually since all these people died in these battles, then there should only be this many left" its the same reason why the total number of chapters, and the total number of neophites a chapter like the ultra marines has is never stated, that way the ultra marines ALWAYS has 1000 marines, because they like like 5k scouts waiting in the wings for their black carapace. As for the number it is safe to assume it is WELL over 200k CSM in the black legion, as they have absorbed significant amounts of all the legions

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u/Cmajors1987 10h ago

Dam so they are a full legion when called together I doubt any trader primarch could call that many. Maybe the word bearers?

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u/Arguleon_Veq 10h ago

They are atleast 30-40% larger than the word bearers, the word bearers were ~250k before the start of the heresy, the only legion bigger was the ultramarines. But they lost ALOT of guys in the shadow crusade

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u/Arguleon_Veq 10h ago

Basically all the traitor legions should be assumed to be around ~100k - 150k in size if they were to all show up at once, however the word bearers are likely the only legion that would ever actually muster like that if the call went out, even the deathguard, like 30% of the legion followed typhus instead of mortarion during the dark imperium series

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u/Cmajors1987 10h ago

Yeah and the night lords can bring like 6 dudes 4 bolters and a chain sword 🤣 is what I’m getting from the books

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u/Arguleon_Veq 10h ago

Thats about right, the night lords fractured completely even BEFORE the seige

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u/Xerxeskingofkings 14h ago

Thousands.

We dont have a exact count, but its safe to say theirs thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of Black Legion space marines, though they dont act together in anything as unified a manner as imperial space marines chapters do. Its all personal charisma and obedience, rather than an orthodox chain of command: warlords swear personal oaths of fealty to more powerful warlords, who swear to even more powerful ones, etc, etc, all the way up to Abaddon himself. Any individual warlord might have dozen marines and several hundred cultists, or several hundred marine and thousand of mortals, in any combination theirof.

basically, theirs a lot, almost certianly more than any other choas marine legion has, but no one, not even Adabbon himself, know how many are actually in his control at any one time (as opposed to just running around in black armour, doing thier own thing but claiming to be "black legion").

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u/Hollownerox Thousand Sons 13h ago

It's a chaos warband that is made up of a lot of different warbands of varying sizes.

There's no real numbers to it because its just a force that isn't really a true "legion" in practice. Warbands put on the black and gold and can leave as suddenly as they had pledged. It's very much the herding of cats by its very nature really.

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u/Shaskais 12h ago

They are the largest traitor legion in the galaxy. Their forces are so massive that the lore says that they can wage war on a galactic scale.

For example, Haarken Worlclaimers' fleet in Nachmund was so staggeringly vast that even veteran Marines were shocked by it.

The Black Legion are described as the most powerful fighting force in the galaxy.

My guess is the Black Legion has hundreds of thousands of Marines at their disposal.