Alpha Legion - Alpha Legion: The Alpha Legion is the Chaos Space Marine Traitor Legion about whom the least is known. The Alpha Legion was once the XXth Legion of Astartes created during the First Founding by the Emperor of Mankind to carry out His Great Crusade to reunite all of Humanity in a new golden age under His rule. They are experts in infiltration, covert operations, misdirection and diversion tactics, and their armies contain many Chaos Cultists and other mortal agents in addition to regular Heretic Astartes.The Alpha Legion's primarch was named Alpharius, and was actually one of the identical twin Primarchs Alpharius Omegon, two brilliant and secretive sons of the Emperor, one of whom was believed slain at the Battle of Pluto during the Horus Heresy by Rogal Dorn of the Imperial Fists and the other reportedly after the end of the Heresy by Roboute Guilliman, the primarch of the Ultramarines. Despite its seeming allegiance to Chaos, a closer scrutiny of the Alpha Legion's known history indicates that their seeming service to Chaos Undivided might actually be the greatest deception they have played upon the Imperium.With true accounts of the Horus Heresy the purview of the Ordo Malleus and only known to the bulk of Humanity as legend and myth, records of most of the Traitor Legions are very hard to come by. This is even more the case with the Alpha Legion, because the XXth Legion embraced misdirection and stealth as its primary means of conducting war. The Alpha Legion was the last of the Legiones Astartes to be united with its primarch, only serving under them for a few solar decades before the Horus Heresy erupted.The Legion was known as secretive in the extreme, favouring cunning ruses and clandestine deployments, and as such very little is known of its deeds. While most accounts involving the Traitor Legions are unreliable, those that mention the Alpha Legion are regarded by most Imperial savants with outright skepticism. The misinformation surrounding the Alpha Legion even extends to the nature and identity of its primarch. Known to outsiders only by the cipher "Alpharius," very little is known of the Legion's primarch besides his genius in implementing the most cunning of stratagems and tactics.It is said that Alpharius revelled in fighting in such a manner that his enemies only ever realised they were under attack at the very last moment. Such tactics are said to range from conventional ﬂank attacks timed to strike at the precise moment when they would precipitate the enemy's complete collapse, to extended campaigns of infiltration, exploitation of partisan groups, undermining enemy command and control assets and spreading fear and suspicion through compromised communication networks.As Space Marines, the Alpha Legion was entirely capable of conducting the full range of military operations normally associated with these elite, transhuman warriors. However, it appears that Alpharius and his warriors were disposed towards the use of stealth and guile, preferring such tactics to more mundane approaches to war.This is said to have caused acrimony between Alpharius and Roboute Guilliman when the Alpha Legion was tasked with conquering the world of Tesstra Prime. The XXth Legion executed a masterful campaign in which every possible ruse and stratagem was utilised and the enemy defeated before he even realised he was fighting for his very existence, by which time he had suffered an estimated 90% losses.The primarch of the Ultramarines declared the campaign a grand waste of time and resources, claiming the target world could have been taken far quicker by conventional means. Alpharius replied that such an approach would have been "too easy," a view that Horus alone shared with him.The Alpha Legion is known to have taken part in the galaxy-spanning disaster that was the Horus Heresy, though as ever, its exact role is unclear. One thing is for certain, the XXth Legion was present at the Drop Site Massacre at Isstvan V, fighting in the second wave as one of the three Traitor Legions that only revealed their true colours when the savagely mauled Raven Guard, Salamanders and Iron Hands were falling back to the drop zone.Aside from this action, the Alpha Legion is largely absent from what accounts of the Horus Heresy remain in the 41st Millennium, only cropping up in a handful of places and often in contradictory fashion. The annals of the Space Wolves and White Scars both record battles against the Alpha Legion, and it appears that Alpharius revelled in the battles he fought against his erstwhile brothers.Yet, at the same time, he pursued his own strategy. Even after Horus was defeated at the Siege of Terra, the Alpha Legion continued fighting, all the while working its way towards the galactic east. As such, the Legion was not pursued into the Eye of Terror as so many others were, but became embroiled in a series of bitter confrontations against the Ultramarines, who themselves had been engaged in that region when the Warmaster had attacked Terra.Battle was joined at Eskrador, where the Ultramarines Primarch Roboute Guilliman proved himself the greatest of strategists when he predicted that the Alpha Legion would believe they could foresee the tactics he would utilise in the coming battle. For perhaps the only time in his life, Guilliman acted contrary to his own firmly-held military doctrines, and it was Alpharius who walked into a trap. The two primarchs faced one another in battle and Alpharius was defeated and seemingly slain, precipitating the collapse of the entire Alpha Legion.Or so it at first appeared. Having burned the Traitor primarch's body on a great pyre, Guilliman led his Legion against the remnants of the Alpha Legion, only to discover that far from collapsing, the Legion was mounting a series of cunning and often devastating counterstrikes. After many solar days of bitter fighting, Guilliman gave up hope of an honourable victory and departed Eskrador, ordering a massive orbital bombardment to finish the survivors off.Some have claimed that the entire battle was some grand ploy, though to what end none can say. Certainly, the Alpha Legion fought in the manner of the mythical beast that adorns their armour -- the hydra -- for each time one head is cut off, another moves in to replace it.