Alpha Legion - Pre-Heresy: When faced with the task of elucidating the inner workings and structure of the Alpha Legion, one is once again forced to deal head-on with paradox and contradiction, both by reports and the evidence left in the dust of slaughtered worlds where the XXth Legion wrecked its arts of war.Where one authoritative report might present the Legion's inner workings as highly stratified and cloaked in labyrinthine secrecy beyond any other, a different report, also by reputable sources, might describe the Legion's inner workings as surprisingly open and egalitarian in nature, with each voice bound in conflict regardless of rank or station. Certain commonalities do however exist, particularly in accounts of how the XXth Legion fought, and to some extent trained its Aspirants for war.The first of these is the emphasis the Alpha Legion placed on unity of action and interaction within its ranks. Such co-ordination and faultless discipline was paramount to the rapidly shifting, responsive tactics Alpharius inculcated in his Legion, and the fluidity which characterised the Legion's deployments on the battlefield.It was repeatedly reported that from their first hours as Aspirants, the would-be warriors of the Alpha Legion would train and fight together as units, rather than individual soldiers; the success of each one, and even their survival, depending on the success of the unit as a whole. The exercises and trials the XXth Legion's Aspirants were put through were said to be in their way as deadly as any of the Legiones Astartes, but required both intelligence and cooperation to overcome, so that no single Aspirant might alone survive them.A second commonality in observation of the Alpha Legion was its superlative expertise in the arts of espionage, sabotage, infiltration and assassination. The goal of which was to leave an enemy leaderless and fractured, a helpless puppet before the Legion's onslaught when it came. In counterpoint, tactics of attrition and the forlorn hope, a bloody slog of trench warfare and static defence, were things shunned by the Alpha Legion unless entirely unavoidable, and even then only ever engaged in on the XXth Legion's own terms.When the time for an attack came however, it would be a tactical mistake to underestimate the Alpha Legion's abilities in open warfare, abilities which had drawn grudging praise from both the Warmaster Horus and Sanguinius in action. The members' tactical coherence and fluid mastery of complex stratagems deployed by the Alpha Legion in the realms of infiltration and covert assault also made them masters of eloquent manoeuvres, feints and ambush in open battle. To fight the Alpha Legion's warriors and war machines in open battle was akin to fighting a single, vast and crushing entity with mystical limbs and striking fangs, but operating under a single malevolent will.It is unclear whether the Alpha Legion ever conformed fully to the original operating strictures and organisational pattern laid out for the Space Marine Legions in the Principia Belicosa at the start of the Great Crusade, particularly as the Alpha Legion was formed long after the initial Founding of the other Legions. Outwardly though, there was extensive resemblance to the basic Legion patterns, although the command structure and the organisation of the Alpha Legion can be discerned as being radically more fluid and specialised.It seems entirely probable, given the evidence available, that an individual Legionary's role and position within the division he was attached to was adapted and changed as frequently as tactical need demanded, and perhaps to some higher system of purpose whose ultimate goal remains unknown.The Alpha Legion's companies, battalions and Chapters (sometimes referred to as "Harrows," "Cohorts," "Hosts," and "Instruments" in shifting meaning) were formalised and broken down seemingly at the whim of Alpharius and the Legion's commanders. To this end, unit numerations were swapped and heraldry changed and adapted, personnel and resources were reassigned or removed entirely from an order of battle, only to be later again replaced.Such organisational transits were noted not only between active deployments but also even during the coarse of a particular campaign. This made the Legion's strength, intentions and deployments almost impossible to gauge or track to foe and friend alike.This shifting and deliberate formlessness may, by some reports, have extended even to a particular Legionary's identity and rank, and is echoed in reports of uncommon similarity in both the physical features and aspect sometimes displayed by the Astartes of the XXth Legion. Needless to say, this latter phenomenon is confusingly, not constantly, observed in the record either, and while some reports speak of the Legion's members displaying a strange physical uniformity, others infer them as originating from a mixture of genotypes, while others indicate a stranger, waxy and unnatural appearance with grey flesh blank of pigment, and sees them adorned with shimmering serpentine electoos.It is entirely possible that all of these reports are equally valid. Whether surgical or memetic implantation techniques, proscribed cognitive manipulation or esoteric technologies were employed to these ends remains unknown, as does just to what extent the individual Legionaries undertook such measures voluntarily -- or perhaps were even aware of being subjected to them at all.At a strategic level the Alpha Legion was clearly at pains to maintain a wide spectrum of military assets and capacities, its dedication to flexibility ensuring it was as capable in armoured warfare as it was in surgical drop strikes, artillery fire support or close-quarter Zone Mortalis operations. It was supported in maintaining these abilities by voracious demand for matèriel, particularly supplied by Forge Worlds such as Lucius, Incaladion and Phaeton -- with some of these treaties of provender brokered directly by the Warmaster Horus, no doubt in the hope of further securing the Alpha Legion's loyalty.These arrangements do not, however, account for the full scope of the Alpha Legion's extensive panoply of war, particularly their known acquisition of rare and specialised wargear notionally only manufactured by the armouries of certain Legions and never released to others, or not yet issued outside of close prototype deployments.A case in point is the evidence of the Alpha Legion's access to a version of Mark VI Corvus Pattern Power Armour, not then in general circulation among the Legiones Astartes, as early as the Drop Site Massacre and the First Battle of Paramar. Later battlefield recovery and analysis of this so-called "Corvus-Alpha" armour shows it in fact to be a unique variant of the Mark VI suit likely developed separately from an early prototype of unknown manufacture.This suggests that the Alpha Legion may have acquired incomplete schematics by covert means early in the project's life and chosen to develop it on their own without recourse to the Mechanicum. It has been surmised that long before the Horus Heresy was to tear the Imperium asunder, the Alpha Legion had sought to secure its own extensive facilities of manufacture and positioned numerous hidden supply outposts and arms caches, both within Imperial space and beyond it, the full extent of which will never be known.Another mysterious development encountered by Loyalist Space Marines forces at Istvaan V were Banestrike Bolter rounds. These mysterious variant bolt shells, believed to have been designed in secret within the armouries of the Alpha Legion long before the outbreak of the Horus Heresy, had it seems a sole purpose; to breach the ceramite Power Armour of Space Marines.Used openly for the first time at the Drop Site Massacre on Istvaan V, their dense explosive cores and firing stresses reduced their range and swiftly degraded the firing weapon, but their effect against the betrayed Loyalist Astartes was devastating. Fortunately for the Loyalists, supplies of these difficult to manufacture munition rounds were limited, and only the Alpha Legion and the Sons of Horus were able to field them in substantial numbers beyond that incident of brutal treachery.Exact figures for the martial strength of the Alpha Legion at the outset of the wars of the Horus Heresy are impossible to obtain. Sources and estimates vary wildly, some making extravagant claims which may both overestimate or undervalue the Alpha Legion's manpower. Most contemporaneous accounts around the time of the Drop Site Massacre put the Alpha Legion at between 120,000 and 130,000 Legionaries strong, placing it within the middle tier of Space Marine Legion strengths.Some theorists have pointed the figure as far lower, somewhere in the 90,000 range based upon the largest concentration of Alpha Legion forces ever seen in operation in a single theatre. With hindsight and diligent corroboration however, evidence of multiple simultaneous battle-groups operating in far distant locales suggests a far higher figure than either of these estimates, well into the range of 180,000 Legionnaires which, if accurate, would make it one of the most formidable Legions in sheer size alone, a factor unguessed by both sides of the civil war that was to follow.In terms of access to wargear and star-faring vessels, the Alpha Legion were formidably equipped. Again, true estimates are difficult to arrive at, but most pictorial and second party reports show the Alpha Legion as possessing extensive access to the most modern forms of Legiones Astartes equipment, not limited to Maximus and Tartaros Pattern Terminator Armour, the Sicaran Battle Tank and their sub-types as well as extensive stocks of plasma and Conversion Beam weaponry and specialised munitions unknown outside the Legion.In terms of warships, the Alpha Legion was known to possess a very extensive and diverse fleet, although lacking in large numbers of heavy capital ships and planetary siegecraft in comparison to most other Legions. The main strength of the Alpha Legion's fleets then was found in a plethora of different intermediate-class and Escort vessels, with range and speed being their primary focus.The Alpha Legion was also suspected of utilising a number of captured xenos vessels and indeed incorporating xenos technology into their warship designs -- a practise strictly forbidden under Imperial law without the sanction of the Mechanicum -- but given the Legion's frequent activities far beyond the Imperium's borders and its hidden strengths and bases of operation, such a suspicion was impossible to prove.As the war of the Horus Heresy raged on, the XXth Legion demonstrated an enviable ability to replace its battlefield losses. While the war continued and many Legions saw their strength shorn away, the Alpha Legion appeared to grow stronger throughout the conflict, despite several seemingly serious defeats. Much like the hydra of myth, where one head was cut from the Legion's body, two more appeared to grow in its place.