War Hounds - The Great Crusade: As the early decades of the Great Crusade progressed after ca. 800.M30, and the first of the primarchs were discovered across the galaxy where they had been dispersed by the Ruinous Powers, the XIIth Legion was broken up temporarily into a number of independent sub-commands, each several thousand Space Marines strong. The largest of these, at some 8,000 War Hounds, along with dedicated assault and fleet support elements, was designated the 13th Expeditionary Fleet, or the "Bloody 13th" as it became quickly known. These detachments were sent as a mobile reserve where the fighting was fiercest on the Great Crusade's frontlines. There they served as frontline assault troops in glorious campaigns alongside the Space Wolves, Iron Warriors and Dark Angels Legions. Elsewhere they would often provide the killing-strike for larger Imperial Army formations in war zones where an impasse had been reached, breaking a strategic deadlock in a single furious attack which sent an enemy reeling.The War Hounds developed a reputation for victory, although at a cost, and it was said every assault they conducted ended in only one of two ways: victorious slaughter or simple slaughter, either of which left the foe in no condition to resist further. However effective the Legion was, there were many who fought alongside them who found them also to be unpredictable, intemperate and dangerous to anything that stood in their path, combatant, civilian or otherwise. Rumours soon began to circulate that the War Hounds would put to the sword human auxiliary regiments of the Imperial Army they saw as failing them in battle, and they kept a guarded distance from other Legions. It was noted by outsiders that the War Hounds' officers enforced an unusually harsh code of discipline in their ranks which was indeed needed, as the Astartes of this Legion often proved fractious, and bloodshed between Battle-Brothers was far from uncommon.The XIIth Legion was increasingly deemed by the Imperial War Council as being more suitable for use against targets where annihilation was the goal rather than Imperial Compliance or liberation, a task to which they seemed eminently suited. The War Hounds were brought together again under the banner of the "Bloody 13th" alongside a variety of units who, like the War Hounds, had gained a dark reputation for unrestrained violence rather than military discipline, or who were otherwise deemed as unusable for actions where collateral damage was to be kept to a minimum and liberation rather than destruction was the goal. They mustered on the harsh, volcanic world of Bodt which had been taken by the War Hounds as a training ground some years before, included regiments of Feral World head-hunters inducted into the Imperial Army and brute Abhumans on the edge of the Imperium's tolerated genetic deviance. To these were added units such as the Titans of the Legio Audax around whom a pall of suspicion had fallen ever since the Lorin Alpha Massacres, and the distrusted Numen Gun Clans -- nomadic techno-barbarians who had bitterly fought against Compliance for many standard years before their recent and grudging induction into the Imperium.