Alpha Legion: Background 1 - History

If you've heard of the Alpha Legion, you've no doubt heard they are secretive, duplicitous, and contradictory to the extreme. The Horus Heresy (HH) book series has done much to improve and expand on previous background material that merely stated, not showed, the tactics and methods the Alpha Legion use to achieve their goals. The HH books have also provided some inkling for the basis of the Alpha Legion's goals, while steering clear of stating anything explicitly (as well they should!). And as much as I like having the answers, keeping the Alpha Legion's goals a mystery fulfills the very practical purpose of letting fans of the game and story, like me, make up their own reasons, and therefore decide on the motivations and goals of their own cells of Alpha Legionnaires.

I will obviously be refraining from spoiling events of the HH books. However, despite the fact that this started as a painting blog, I enjoy every part of this hobby, so along with starting this new project I will also be starting to devote entire posts (like this one) to background about the armies I build as well as writing about tactics and rules the armies use. The background informs certain decisions about what units I will use and what the figures I use will look like. For me, it's no good to have an army that has all the right models, but has no deeper reason behind their appearance.

The bases of my Alpha Legion are themed as a red-orange desert. There are two reasons for this. The first is that I really enjoy desert climates. But secondly, the red-orange desert look is symbolic of the Alpha Legion's origins, both in the background material and for me personally. Bright red-orange deserts cover the planet Nurth, which is the setting of Dan Abnett's Legion. I mentioned the novel in a previous post, but to reiterate, it was the first time in the Horus Heresy series that the Alpha Legion were described, and boy did Abnett breathe life into their story. It is on Nurth that the Alpha Legion first make contact with the mysterious Cabal, which ultimately leads to their decision to turn on the Imperium and side with Horus (or did they?).

Legion is also where my fascination with the Alpha Legion originated, so it seemed doubly appropriate to give my models bases that represented this genesis.

Though I am still fleshing out the background for my forces, their bases will tie into their story in that my forces often operate from Nurth. It is now a dead world, but why should that make it less useful?  No doubt at least some legionnaires use Nurth as a hidden base now and again. Some of the characters and squads in the army will have been part of the events surrounding the Nurth campaign, and so the bases will be paying homage to their backgrounds, as well.

+++ Hydra Dominatus +++