Horus Heresy · atlas

Dispute in the canon · 3 positions

Legion strengths

Positions

  1. Position 1

    Forge World Black Books — the atlas’s primary series; they give orders of magnitude and ranges, not exact head counts.

    • Forge World Black Books I–IX

  2. Position 2

    Novels, where a “legion” is a literary multitude with no count.

    Russian source notes (1) RU
    • Black Library: серия «Ересь Хоруса»

  3. Position 3

    Later 40k codices that retroactively reduce the pre-war figures.

    • Lexicanum: Space Marine Legion

Our position

The force snapshots are a reconstruction from the Black Books (Isstvan V — from Journal Tactica), without Titans and the Excertus. Orders of magnitude matter more than units: 250 thousand for the XIII against a few thousand survivors of the XIX after the Drop Site (from “less than three thousand” to 4,724) is a fact of the map, even if both figures are “approximate”. The spread between the Legions is real and large: from ~10 thousand (XV) to ~250 thousand (XIII).

  • Journal Tactica: The Isstvan V Dropsite Massacre — Part One (GW)
  • The Horus Heresy Book I: Betrayal (Forge World)
  • The Horus Heresy Book II: Massacre (Forge World)
  • Lexicanum: Drop Site Massacre

Events of the dispute

  1. 006.M31 Drop Site Massacre on Isstvan V Atrocity

    Terra sent seven Legions to crush Horus on Isstvan V.

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Permalink: https://astart.es/en/disputes/disp-strength/