My point was, it was only one author. Dan Abnett wrote the book "Xenos" (and its sequel "Malleus" )wherein Eisenhorn & Aemos casually discuss tyranids like they're common knowledge, and the second discussion is set almost a century before (by the dates characters state in the books) Ravenor encounters Termagaunts (I think), and has no idea what they are and is told they have yet to show up in the Imperium. Ravenor's encounter was in 404 of M40. IDK what year they showed up on Tyran or whatever the first planet was, according to continuity, but Abnett was the sole author of those three books.

I can only guess the Ravenor passage was Abnett's mea culpa for the mistake.

According to the latest HH novel I read, he is the primarch of the Blood Angels, and the end of the novel "Fear to Tread" seems to imply his evitable fall. In one of the first HH books, when mortally wounded, before his fall to Chaos, Horus tells a reporter that he felt Sanguinus should have been the Warmaster. Yet, his legion seems to be almost as psychotically bloodthirsty as the World Eaters or the followers of Khorne.

The thing about the names was with the ordinary Astartes, not the primarchs. Horus & Magnus were the primarchs of the legions Abbadon & Ahriman respectively served, and were among the two most devoted to their "fathers". I don't recall any particularly villanous names from the good legions, like the Ultramarines or Raven Guard or Blood Angels, or apparently, the Space Wolves. But the first few books, which prominently featured Ezekyle Abbadon, and Thousand Sons, of which Ahriman was a major protagonist, both placed heavy emphasis on the recollections of Terran culture and mythology. Surely the satanic implications of the names used by such high-ranking officers in their legions should not have passed unnoticed.

Huh. Same deal as above, re: the Blood Angels. There was a very strong implication that they degenerate into giant wolves, and all of them show signs of the mutation, with fangs and eyes etc. In "Fear to Tread" Sanguinus was terrified to reveal a tendency of the Blood Angels to snap and go psycho-cannibal, for fear his legion would be purged like a couple of others were (II & XI IIRC). Magnus made a faustian bargain with the Ruinous Powers when he first took command of his legion, in order to hold back their tendency to mutation, which seems to be an absolute no-no in the Imperium (death to the alien, the mutant and witch! etc... ), and it seems he feared the same fate Sanguinus feared.

Even if Russ & the Wolves apparently never betray the Emperor (the Ultramarine primarch's assertion that he and Sanguinus were two of his favorite four makes a lot more sense, and explains how they eventually beat back the powers of Chaos with the legions split 50/50), I have to wonder how they managed to go on for 10,000 years with the chapter intact and no one taking notice of their issue. And the Blood Angels, too, apparently.

Ah. Is there a chapter for the Hereticus?

I was told that the Grey Knights are the 40K equivalent of paladins, who specialize in fighting demons (hence my assumption that there were Grey Knights in each chapter), so that could be the conflict motive with them and the Space Wolves, if they start thinking the wolf-issue is due to a Chaotic taint. I take it from your context that the Dark Angels ALSO stay straight? I figured since they had two whole novels in the Horus Heresy series entirely about them and no other legions guest-starring, they were going to fall, too.

Going back and counting from the scene at Isstvan where they turn traitor and wipe out three loyalist legions, the task force came to fight the Sons of Horus, the Emperor's Children, the World Eaters and the Death Guard, which is 4 bad out of 18. The Alpha Legion, Word Bears (each of whom have their own HH books detailing their reasons for treasons), Night Lords (Dembski-Bowden's present-day trilogy does the same thing, in effect) and Iron Warriors then turned in the middle of the fight. That's a total of 8, and since the Thousand Sons teleport to safety in the Warp, that accounts for 9/18 or exactly a 50/50 split. Though other books imply the numbers were not equal, with the Ultramarines & Word Bearers explicitly stated to be the two largest legions by a considerable number, the former being implied to have grown to encompass the gap left by the two purged legions, and the latter because they slacked off doing missionary work instead of fighting, so they never took many casualties; by contrast, the Space Wolves only have 10 numbered companies, which seem to be rather cozy and tight-knit groups, more like a single viking crew (in space, on space-steroids, made out of wolf DNA), than a large military formation.

What I'm getting at, is that without the assumptions you have corrected, a lot of things make sense, and in that light, I can recall a lot of examples of how a uniform rule would not necessarily apply.


It sounds more like Delta Force, which recruits elite Army soldiers from various other Army units, like the 10th Mountain, the Rangers, the Special Forces (Green Berets), the 82nd Airborne, and so on. Or like fictional elite units, such as Rainbow in Tom Clancy's "Rainbow Six" (books & games), which features guys from American Delta Force, British SAS, German GS-9, etc. in one small world-wide counter-terror force.

So the Grey Knights in the Dawn of War game that you can use while controling the Blood Ravens chapter, would, I guess, be a unit detached to, IDK, wipe out any daemons the BR find on Kronos or Kaurava. Are the Grey Knights the same deal as the Deathwatch, or are they a discrete chapter? I have a hard time thinking they'd get any Space Wolves within their unit to go along with a fight on their parent chapter (or any other chapter, for that matter - even when it was obvious how evil their legions had turned, the loyal individuals in the HH books had trouble fighting them, and some of the bad ones had qualms about killing the loyalists; even Abbadon, who seems to be the current Big Bad of Warhammer 40K, botched the kill of the main loyalist in the Sons of Horus).