Board Thread:Warhammer 40k General Discussion/@comment-2113806-20131221211104/@comment-2113806-20131223221410

I'm afraid the only Black Library 40k books I've read are Abnett's Ghosts and Inquisition Books (I still have my original paperbacks somewhere), ADB's Night Lords trilogy, Grimaldus and Emperor's Gift, Back in the early days I read Execution Hour and some of the awful Bill King Space Wolf novels. For 30k, pretty much all the Horus Heresy series.So alas I don't know the individual battle, or indeed these references. And one must remember that 40k has 'canon' in the loosest sense - everything is canonical, and very little can be consistent.

As for not splitting the articles - perhaps. It depends on what one associates as the main defining trait of each Traitor legion, and how consistent these are before and after the Heresy. Not simply these are 'angry marines', these are 'sorcerous marines', these are the 'chemical marines': but changes that are structural, cultural, hierarchical, spiritual, etc, Perhaps continued loyalty to a name and a primach, as well as some surviving members, suggests the same 'being' of the Legion exists today, for example perhaps with the Bearers of the Word or the Children of the Emperor, yet ... they are different, irrevocably from pre-heretical state, from the organised and orientated armies of the heresy and maybe even their Scouring state. There is 10000 years difference.

With regards to this wikia, often in a large encyclopadia, long-lasting institutions might be broken down into historical phases reflective of the massive changes that occur to them. It is fallacious to say that things do not change and that institutions remains the same over time, and we use either period prefixes or different names to indicate changes in organisations, states and indeed armies. Hence medieval England and early-modern or Renaissance England; or for a more distinct example the Roman Empire and the Byzantine Empire, though the latter was the Roman Empire - the legal succession of its Eastern Imperium. For an encyclopaedia, which aims to present information clearly and efficiently, periodisation is important: it helps avoid fallatial pseudo-narratives, and allows greater accuracy and details in the historical changes. Of course alll can be incorporated in one super-page: but it requires so much detail at every level.

As for the Black Legion issue. I cannot agree that the BL is the same as the Sons of Horus. They are irrevocably different, except that they share some of the same membership. However they are not the same as the Sons of Horus. The most simplest difference is perhaps fundamental to understanding this difference. Cthonia. What was Cthonia to many of the Sons? Everything, it seems - given its meaning in Horus Rising to A Galaxy in Flames, and the way Cthonian has been used by Forge World too to define the Sons visually. What is it to the Black Legion? Nothing. More so, what of Horus? To the Luna Wolves and then the Sons, again, everything. To the Legion? Nothing. The Legion is defined, in the simplest terms, by its cosmopolitan membership, its lack of place and its rejection of Horus. None of these essential traits marked the Luna Wolves/Sons of Horus.