Midnight Host

"Some of our kin view us as failures, as lesser than they. But they are wrong. While they have been broken, we remain strong."

- Kejene Teward Reiner, speaking to his Legion on the eve of the Assault on Obsailes.

The Midnight Host are the XIXth Legion, striving to prove themselves ever since their founding. Emerging from a dark history of being sidelined and looked down upon, the Legion has found a new identity since the discovery of their Primarch Kejene Teward Reiner in being guardians of their new homes in the stars and a new common identity as brothers of a Legion they can be proud of. They are boisterous and brotherly, and while they will claim to not care what other Legions think of them, in truth they do care that other Legions should see them as equals.

Though individually weaker than Astartes from the other Legions, the Host use any means they have to make up for their shortcomings and get the job done. In battle, the Host make use of Combined Arms as much as possible, integrating specialist Astartes into their units at all levels and utilizing armoured and air support to wear down and harass the enemy. Many would think them an easy target as the Ruins descended, and the Host would strive to prove them all wrong.

Origins
The Legion was first deployed in the midst of the Unification Wars. It is believed that following the near disastrous geneseed of the XVIIth that kept their numbers low and the loss of the XVIIIth, the XIXth’s geneseed was designed to maximise the implantation success rate. Due to a combination of their weaker enhancements and seemingly endless numbers, the commanders of the Legion frequently put the early 19th in situations that burned through their numbers while producing only middling results. Such tactics, while sometimes workable, cost far too much in terms of resources invested in the Astartes compared to the piddling domains of the subjugated techno-barbarians. This lukewarm performance soured the Legion’s reputation, and before long they were withdrawn from the front to rebuild their numbers with the dregs of the recruitment pool, usually prisoners and ‘troublesome populations’. Due to its geneseed, prisoners as old as 20 were capable of being inducted into the Legion (though with even lower ability enhancement) and so, despite its disfavoured status, the 19th had recovered to an acceptable strength by the Great Crusade.

Its reputation remained, however, and coupled with the dishonourable origin of most of its members, discipline and morale were only held in check by heavy-handed means such as continual hypnotherapy and chemical inhibitors. The effect this had on the personality of its Legionaries, and the continued deployment of the Legion to high-risk and suicidal operations where Auxilia were insufficient, led to the 19th to be known as The Forlorn Legion, amongst other unflattering epithets. The Legion was also deemed too unreliable to lead Expeditionary Fleets and so its prodigious numbers were split into smaller groups under the command of other Legions. Its numbers were also consciously kept in check at a moderately large number by the War Council despite its high geneseed acceptance rate, to prevent siphoning of resources and recruitment to a subpar Legion.

Internally, the commanders of the Legion realised that if they were to perform on par with the other Legions, they would require a complete change in strategy to make up for their deficiencies and lean into their strengths. The Legion began to rely more and more on the technological edge the Imperium had over most of its enemies, building up relations with the Mechanicum and reserving detachments to their disposal in exchange for increased tank, speeder and artillery requisition. This paid off well as the Legion’s detachments continued to find themselves in desperate defensive battles by command of their brother Legions. With increasingly overwhelming firepower, the Forlorn Legion pulled off several impressive defensive victories. However, there was only so much the Forlorn could requisition directly from Forge Worlds, and they still relied on raw weight of numbers in many instances, especially troublesome units, to make up for frequent shortfalls in firepower.

Another innovation during this time was capitalising on the Legion’s numbers and stable geneseed. With the shift from bodies to firepower the Forlorn was able to experiment in assigning more of their number to Specialist roles such as Apothecaries, Psykers and other specialised Tactical units. However, the ultimately limited resources of the Legion, unreliable discipline of the prison populations from which they recruited, limited command capacity and general churning of the ranks throughout the course of the early Great Crusade prevented this idea from fully taking shape until the Forlorn found their Primarch.

Legion Organisation and Structure
Due to its size, the Midnight Host is divided into divisions at its highest levels, consisting of roughly 10,000 Astartes. Each Division is responsible for the administrative and logistical arrangements of its subsidiary Chapters as each Division’s area of responsibility in the Great Crusade generally covers large-enough of a space that it would be unwieldy for the Legion’s Command Council to micromanage all of their areas. Each Division also hosts its own Veteran community who are frequently sent from Brigade to Brigade to shore up critical Crusade sectors. Their unique placement indirectly assists in creating a shared identity for each Division.

Nominally containing up to 2,000 Astartes in 4 cohorts, the Brigade is a combined-arms unit that sees its own organic armoured support. Cassian Expeditionary Forces are also attached to Astartes units at the Brigade level and operate in their own units to support Astartes operations.

Each cohort varied in size. Nominally a Cohort was intended to field 500 Astartes in 5 companies. In practice, the large numbers of Astartes in the Midnight Host meant that some Cohorts consolidated up to 10 companies when in the field.

Organised similar to the dictates of the Principia Belicosa, the Company consists of roughly 100 Astartes and divided into Squads. The Battle-Brothers of the Squad is, as with most Legions, the foundation of the Midnight Host. This is doubly so due to the individual deficiencies of the Host; only teamwork and brotherhood can carry the Astartes of the Legion through fire and flame. A squad is usually composed of ten Tactical Marines or Bulwarks with two Chemics attached, where one out of every ten Marines is a Sergeant. However, the Legion frequently deploys Squads in Patrols, consisting of 2 Squads, and makes frequent use of specialist attachments such as Espsions, Techmarines, Bulwarks, Fire-Support Squads etc. in conjunction with these Patrols. Because of its penchant for specialist support of all sorts, a Company is on average almost 150 men strong.

Legion Command Hierarchy
In the days when the Legion was Forlorn, every unit below the Division level had a dual command structure: apart from tactical commanders (captains etc.) most units also had a body of attached Astartes from the Supervisory Corps, which consisted of Chemics and Wardens, the latter being the equivalent of the Consul-Opsequiari in other Legions but given a much bigger mandate.

This was required to maintain command and control among the unruly and insubordinate Legionaries of the 19th, especially at lower levels where plans to subvert the command hierarchy could easily brew between, for example, a Sergeant and his men attached to another Legion for years on end. In the modern Legion, Dual Command has been completely phased out but Chemics remain an integral part of every Squad and Wardens have become a unique form of specialist, trained in the wide spectrum of counter-insurgent or occupational operations and co-leading Squads in such environments.

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