Records, tainted as they may be, place the Sons of Horus at a fighting strength of approximately 130,000-170,000 Space Marines in the period leading up to the Isstvan III Atrocity. Although the figure may have been higher, this estimate would also tally with more general assessments of the Sons of Horus Legion being in the upper quarter of the Legions in terms of the Space Marine manpower available to them.

Instead of a formal structure, Horus would group companies and individual units together as required for the execution of a particular campaign. The commander of such a formation would usually be a senior Captain. If the formation was especially large, then other Captains would take on the role of lieutenants to the overall force commander until the completion of the campaign. These formations rarely had formal titles, but the Sons of Horus commonly referred to formations intended to prosecute a rapid assault as "Speartips."

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There were distinctions between those who fought with the Legion for longer, between those who had fought in different campaigns, between those who had received certain honours, and between ordinary squads and those who formed a Captain's Honour Guard. Beneath the surface of this simmered other divisions, not easily visible to the outsider, divisions of blood and origin, divisions that the mere act of becoming a Space Marine should have washed away, but for the Sons of Horus did not in many cases. These hidden divisions would eventually bear bitter fruit.

The terrible galactic civil war that followed and lasted for 7 Terran years of genocidal death and destruction on a scale never before witnessed by Mankind, called the Horus Heresy by later generations, was the most terrible conflict in the history of the Imperium, and came close to shattering it forever. Horus and his Traitor Legions moved relentlessly towards Terra, determined to throw down the Emperor once and for all. Grael Noctua - Noctua was a Tactical Squad Sergeant assigned to the Sons of Horus' 25 th Company during the Horus Heresy. Noctua was recommended to become a member of the Mournival by Captain Horus Aximand following the Battle of the Mausolytic Precinct on the planet Dwell to replace the Mournival members who had been lost on Isstvan III during the conflict between the Traitors and Loyalists within the Sons of Horus.

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The XVI th Legion's Great Crusade fleet was accorded to be among the greatest under any single commander's flag, with in excess of one hundred capital ships and perhaps three times that figure in smaller Cruisers and Escorts under Horus' direct command. Horus, the true primarch of the Luna Wolves, was the first of the primarchs to be recovered by the Emperor, having been cast in his gestation capsule through the Warp much closer to Terra on Cthonia than the others by the Ruinous Powers, and he was found at a much younger age. Whereas the early history of many primarchs is extensively if unevenly documented, the same cannot be said of Horus. Contradiction and omission tarnishes all accounts of Horus' formative years. The Orks of Ullanor represented the largest concentration of Greenskins ever faced by the military forces of the Imperium of Man before the Third War for Armageddon began during the late 41 st Millennium. Following the defeat of the Orks of Ullanor largely due to the tactics and leadership of Horus, the Emperor of Mankind returned to Terra to begin work on his vast project to open up the Aeldari Webway for Mankind's use. In his place to command the vast forces of the Great Crusade he left Horus.

In eschewing formality and fixed structure above the basic level of the company, Horus demonstrated his pragmatism and his preference for waging war with careful precision. Within the Luna Wolves and the later Sons of Horus, squads also commonly had their own honorific or epithetic titles rather than simple numerations: the Illuminators Prime, Death Makers, Jerrok's Reavers, the First Sons, and similar appellations, while some were named for the Sergeant or Chieftain that led them if their leader's own reputation was strong enough alone. Oblivion (Strike Cruiser, Unknown Class) - The Oblivion was severely damaged during Abaddon’s assault on Manachea Vysidae during the Manachean War. It is believed that the Oblivion was amongst the first vessels to be repaired at the recently conquered facilities of Port Maw. Across tens of thousands of battles the Luna Wolves were rarely defeated. In every mode of deployment they excelled, whether as the spearhead of a star cluster-sized assault or as an individual squad supporting a grand formation of the Imperial Army. Other Legions, sometimes hostile to the interference of their fellow Space Marines, would request campaign placement amongst the Luna Wolves and welcome it in return. The word Mournival, according to the Iterator Memed, was drawn from the ancient Franc (French) language of Terra and referred to a hand during a card game that included one of each of the four face cards, which was usually a winning hand.Renouncing his oath to the Emperor, Horus led his Legion into worship of the myriad Chaos Gods. He then sought to turn many of his fellow primarchs to Chaos, and succeeded with Angron, Fulgrim and Mortarion, who were the first of the 8 other primarchs and Space Marine Legions that would follow Horus and his Astartes into betrayal. The XVI th Legion's homeworld, the ancient Mining World of Cthonia, no longer exists, having apparently lost geo-structural integrity and broken apart into asteroids and debris during the centuries following the Horus Heresy. Certainly the once ore-rich planet was riddled with mine workings right through to its dead core as the numerous gangers that formed the majority of the world's population may originally have been imported as work teams to maintain the crumbling tunnels.

Compliance of Darrowmar (Unknown Date.M30) - The Luna Wolves fought alongside the Night Lords Legion in bringing the world of Darrowmar into Imperial Compliance.He took up the Emperor's old offer and renamed the XVI th Legion the Sons of Horus after being convinced to do so by his brother Primarch Sanguinius of the Blood Angels Legion just before his experiences on Davin. Horus was now allied body and soul to the Ruinous Powers of Chaos, and he had a new vision for the Imperium with himself rather than the Emperor at its head. Though the Luna Wolves had won many victories in their years of ceaseless conflict, one would eclipse all others and see them reborn once again. The greatest of the nascent Imperium's victories during the high point of the Great Crusade came in the form of the defeat of the largest Ork empire ever encountered.