War Hounds - Legion History: The Emperor of Mankind sought to unite all of Humanity under one banner following the Long Night of the Age of Strife, and end inter-Human conflict. Once united, the Emperor intended to begin the next stage of His great plan to ensure Human domination of the Milky Way Galaxy, which He judged to be necessary if Humanity was to survive the never-ceasing threats to its existence embodied by Chaos, myriad xenos races and its own fragile Human nature. In time, when the Emperor's eye first began to fall beyond Terra, He began to raise new armies to fight His Great Crusade. He drew these new troops in part from the forces that had already unified Terra during the Unification Wars of the late 30th Millennium. To carry out the Great Crusade and reunite all the scattered colony worlds of Mankind beneath the single banner of the Imperium of Man, the Emperor created the genetically-enhanced superhuman warriors known as the Legiones Astartes, the Space Marine Legions. These elite forces would serve as the speartip of His Great Crusade, bringing the light of the secular Imperial Truth and enforcing Imperial Compliance with the new regime on every Human-settled world encountered.Such sources that survived the later Siege of Terra at the height of the Horus Heresy regarding the origins and formation of the XIIth Legion of the Legiones Astartes are fragmentary at best, and in compiling their record Imperial scholars were forced to rely on second-hand accounts from those who fought alongside them, and the apocryphal accounts handed down by those many who had cause to fear and resent this most feared of Space Marine Legions. It appears that the Terran origins of the XIIth Legion showed no particular bias as to the techno-barbarian tribe or city-state from which the initial influx of recruits were taken as there was in the case of the other Legions. There has been some circumstantial evidence that there may have been psychological screening used to single out the most inherently aggressive and competitive recruits in an experimental pre-selection program. Whether this came to pass is merely supposition, for it is apparent from such records that survived that the XIIth Legion were from the outset deemed a highly aggressive force, its warriors hot-blooded and savage. One of its most ferocious and promising candidates, Ibram Ghreer, rose quickly within the ranks of the nascent Legion, and eventually assumed command of the XIIth as its first Legion Master.During the Unification Wars the XIIth Legion's first recorded engagement was during the Sa'afrik Liberation where they served as a spearhead of shock troops, mounting direct annihilation assaults on enemy forces, both in open battle and fortified positions, and able to carry the attack despite their then relatively small numbers by sheer courage and the fury of the violence they could unleash. After its initial battles, however, the nascent Legion seems to have been largely held in reserve by the Emperor during the latter Unification Wars and right through the subsequent re-conquest of the Sol System. This may have been done in case of a sudden reversal of the fortunes of war, or as certain veiled evidence implies, as a weapon to be unleashed in case of disloyalty amongst the Emperor's own.During this time the XIIth Legion was kept in a state of constant readiness, relentlessly training and steadily growing in numbers. On the occasions when it was unleashed into battle, the Legion's Astartes performed with almost gleeful savagery, tearing apart whatever enemy they were given to fight without mercy or falter, heedless of the risk and uncaring of the Legion's own losses. It is believed that during this period that the Emperor Himself dubbed the XIIth Legion His "War Hounds" as a tribute to the savage and tenacious way they fought to pacify the narco-sprawls of the Cephic Hives, for the XIIth Legion reminded Him of the white war hounds the Yeshk warriors of the north of Terra had once used. In remembrance of this campaign and the Emperor's pride in them, the red hound became the XIIth Legion's new badge of war.