Imperial Fists - Wars of Unification: If the Emperor was the father of the Legiones Astartes, then Terra was their mother. Just as the Emperor shaped His warriors with His will and intellect, so too did Terra leave her mark on the warriors raised from her soil.These marks, or scars it might be more accurate to say, often shaped a Space Marine Legion's culture, values and methods of war in ways as subtle and deep as the mysteries woven into their flesh. To understand how many of the Legions became as they were, one must first understand Terra.Soaked in blood, ignorance and atrocity, Old Earth in the time before the rise of the Emperor was devoid of hope and existed in a state of darkness. The only order was that of tyrants: fleeting and tainted by madness and petty ambition.The Emperor changed that -- first with His hosts forged from the techno-barbarian tribes who took up His banner, then with his army of gene-forged Thunder Warriors, then with the creation of the Legiones Astartes. With blood and fire He tamed Terra, bringing order and enlightenment where before there had been none. It was this transformation that the VII Legion was made to protect.The first battalions of the VII Legion were raised from across Terra as shown by their earliest battle honour, "Roma." While many other Legions drew their recruits from a particular ethnic or national source, the flesh of the VII Legion came from the people of Terra as a whole.Even in domains where other Legions had "Rights of Tithe," the VII Legion took some of the youths as initiates. Often these would be those who exhibited the greatest capacity for endurance, both in mind and body. Many were of a taciturn nature, slow to talk but quick to act.Why so many of such a wide pool of recruits should be similar is unclear. Certainly, the processes used to activate the VII Legion's gene-seed seem to have inflicted intense pain, and so perhaps it was a purposeful selection of stock suited to surviving the augmentation process. It is also possible that a pattern of recruitment once formed perpetuated until it was tradition. No matter the reason, the grim nature of those recruited into the VII Legion was well-suited to their use.In war the VII Legion was concerned with conquest. While all of the Emperor's forces fought and died to expand the Imperium, many saw only part of the greater vision. Defeat the enemy, tear down their strongholds, break their beliefs and still you would have a land that could turn against the Imperium in the future, or provide other enemies with a weakness to strike at. Victory was not enough, to conquer one had not only to defeat one's enemies, but to hold the fruits of that victory.This philosophy underpinned every action of the VII Legion. In attack they would pay any price in their own blood to secure victory, and once they had victory they would begin to consolidate what they had taken. This pattern can be seen time and again in the later conquest of Ancient Terra.It was the VII Legion which broke the Cities of the Crystal Sea, and then raised the Fortress of the Fifth Circle from their ruins. In the ice-wrapped pinnacles of Himalazia (Himalayan Mountains) they lost three battalions to secure the defeat of the witchery of the Wind Caller clans, but the first Imperial bastions began to rise against the cold sky within solar days of that victory. Across Terra the fruits of their fortress-craft gazed down on those who dwelt in the land around, a constant sign that the strength which had conquered them remained, rooted into the earth.In the first solar decade of their existence, the Imperial Fists raised six hundred citadels upon the lands of the conquered. It is said that the dead of the Legion lie still in the foundations of each, their skulls and blood mingling with the stone and mortar of their walls.With these bastions pinning the conquered lands to the Imperium, order would spread amongst the people of these new domains. The old ways would change, fall or be replaced by the new, and if they did not then the looming fortress would answer the question of what the response to rebellion would be.The VII Legion were more than builders and castellans. At their root they were the most direct expression of the Emperor's design of uniting Humanity, for they were crusaders. Fortresses solidified conquest, and the VII Legion sought conquest with a focused hunger.While fortresses and ordered domains sprang up in their wake, the VII Legion would never linger, but were always moving on, invading uncompliant domains and pushing the frontiers even as they reinforced what they had just taken. Massed shock assaults, using the full array of weaponry within the Legion, typified the VII Legion's approach to war.Multiple battalions often took to the field en masse, breaking enemies with hammer blow force. On the plains of Kennestar, the 5th Battalion of the VII Legion broke the lines of the Tyrancy with an arrowhead of fifty war machines. It is said that the dust cloud thrown up in their wake blotted out the sun.In the tunnels of Galabaz, they cracked the crust above the buried city and dropped into the exposed tunnels beneath while the explosions were still echoing across the mountains. But always, in the wake of the destruction they wrought, they replaced what they had broken with something stronger.It was from these early conquests that the VII Legion acquired its name. When many looked on the lands taken by the VII Legion, they said that it was as if "the hand of the Emperor had descended and gripped with an unbreakable fist."The description of the service done by the VII Legion must have pleased the Emperor, for He personally decreed that they would be known from then on as the "Imperial Fists" and bestowed on them the right to bear the Laurels of Victory as part of their heraldry. Dutiful and taciturn as ever, it is said that the renamed Imperial Fists accepted their honours in humble silence.