Space Wolves - Warlords of the Imperium: With his mighty Frostblade, Russ would continue to plunge headlong into the fighting at the forefront of every battle, vanquishing all before him. Throughout the long and difficult battles of the Great Crusade, the Space Wolves and their lupine allies drawn from amongst the Fenrisian Wolves were always at the front line. Russ strode at the head of his VI Legion, slaughtering all who dared stand before him, his coming announced by the howling of the pack. Leman Russ fought well during the Great Crusade, gaining a reputation as a cunning and fierce, if slightly unstable, Imperial warrior and Astartes leader. The Great Crusade was still young and the Imperium's wars were yet unwon. Its war machine needed as many warlords of Leman Russ' calibre as it could get, despite that several other Primarchs such as Ferrus Manus, Fulgrim and most lately Rogal Dorn had also now re-joined their Legions. After replenishing their numbers following the Wheel of Fire campaign, the VI Legion was once against ready to answer the call to war. The solar decades that were to follow saw Leman Russ and his Legion participate in scores of successful Compliance actions and military campaigns, both alone and in command of numerous secondary war fleets, regiments of the Imperialis Auxilia and even on several occasions, other bodies of Space Marines whose Primarchs had not yet been found. This period of the Legion's history often goes unremarked but in it can be seen a series of victories that reveal Russ and his Legion to be far more than the savage semi-beasts some later portrayals make them out as, and confirm Russ as a field general of surpassing skill and noteworthy record. Before the VI, xenos domains of the Orks and Aeldari, Taralais and Saharduin all fell, and famously on the ancient Hive World of Nova Borilia, the alien tyranny of the Noman, an enslavement that went back millennia, was destroyed. This last conflict in particular was a celebrated victory, for which the ancient battle tank STC restored to the Imperium in that same campaign was named in Leman Russ' honour by the Mechanicum.As time passed, the warriors of Russ began to refer to themselves as the Vylka Fenryka -- the "Wolves of Fenris" in the Fenrisian dialect. The VI was now a Legion on who Leman Russ' famous words and the snarling crimson wolf's head badge -- adopted now as the Legion's own -- had long since confirmed the common epithet of "Space Wolves." Much, it was said, to the private consternation of Horus, whose own "Luna Wolves" wore such a similar name first, but seemed the worse fit for it. Most Astartes of the VI Legion bristled at this cognomen as it was the foolish name given to them by offworlders who recognised none of their customs and traditions. But for all the Legion's conquests on the expanding frontier, it was for the Traitor and the turncoat that Russ and his warriors savoured a particular ire. It was for the aftermath of such actions as these and scores of others, of punishment meted out to "oath breakers" whose savagery was named "excessive" even by generals upon whose orders armies went to their graves and worlds were set flame, that the dark tales that had long surrounded the Legion were once more kindled. The stories were fuelled by the increasingly savage disposition and appearance which was starting to take over the Space Wolves, a name which now seemed as much statement as an enunciation of Legion heraldry.