Space Wolves - Reformation of the Imperium and the Second Founding: Seven standard years after the death of Horus, the Second Founding of the Space Marines was carried out on the orders of Roboute Guilliman, the Primarch of the Ultramarines Legion who now became essentially the new Regent of the Imperium in the Emperor and Malcador the Sigillite's absence. The Horus Heresy had revealed weaknesses in the gene-seed of several Space Marine Legions that had made those Astartes unusually susceptible to corruption by Chaos. These defects had been exacerbated by the accelerated gene-seed cultivation techniques needed to keep the Space Marine Legions up to strength during the latter stages of the Great Crusade. The Ruinous Powers were able to exploit the resultant physical and mental corruption and turned Horus and the Traitor Legions under his command against the Emperor.The first objective of the newly created military treatise known as the Codex Astartes that had been authored by Guilliman as the ultimate expression of his towering tactical understanding of how to best deploy the power of Space Marines, was to reorganise the Space Marine Legions into much smaller military formations and expunge these weaknesses. The Legions were broken down into Chapters, an already extant Astartes military formation in some of the Legions that consisted of 1,000 Battle-Brothers of fighting strength. Never again would one man wield so much power over vast legions of superhuman troops at his command.However, Leman Russ suffered no interference where his Legion was concerned, and flatly refused to listen to Guilliman. According to the Wolf Lord Bulveye of the Legion's 13th Great Company, Russ once dared strike the Emperor in person when He offered criticism to Russ. What the volatile Primarch would not accept from his Father, he would certainly not tolerate from his brother. Only when the situation almost devolved into another Imperial civil war did Leman Russ seemingly relent. The canny Primarch pulled a sleight of hand on his brother Guilliman, ostensibly agreeing to separate the Space Wolves Legion into thirteen independent Great Companies, each roughly a Chapter in strength. The Great Companies, however, already were semi-autonomous, each with their own armouries, starship support and answering to their Jarl or Wolf Lord only, with all of the Jarls answering only to Russ. In essence, Russ' acquiescence changed nothing in the modus operandi of the Space Wolves Legion save for its official table of organisation. Guilliman, with a whole Imperium to rebuild, never had the time to verify that Russ had indeed implemented the teachings of the Codex, and took the Wolf King at his word. The consequence was that today, when all the Great Companies assemble under the Great Wolf's banner, the Space Wolves Chapter numbers far, far more than a thousand Astartes and is the largest currently in existence, save perhaps for the Black Templars Chapter, which has an eerily similar disregard for the Codex Astartes; and maintains a structure of autonomous Crusades answering only to an officer known as the High Marshal.However, Guilliman's Reformation of the Imperium gave Russ the occasion to implement another idea of his, namely the creation of the ill-fated Wolf Brothers Chapter. It was Russ' plan to eventually create enough Space Wolves Successor Chapters to encircle the Eye of Terror, and use them as bulwarks against any re-emergence into realspace of the Traitor Legions. Alas, the Canis Helix's genetic instability made the Wolf Brothers suffer from the Curse of the Wulfen to such a degree that the Chapter had to be purged by the Inquisition for genetic deviancy. The High Lords of Terra recognised the problems of genetic instability that would eventually plague the genetic seed of Leman Russ, giving rise in later times to the terrible Curse of the Wulfen, and therefore decided against dividing and further spreading the Space Wolves' genetic base across the newly-Founded Adeptus Astartes of the Second Founding. The Space Wolves' lack of Successor Chapters has often been noted as unusual given its status as a First Founding Legion with a history extending back to the legendary days of the Great Crusade. Russ' idea of ringing the Eye of Terror with guardian Space Marine Chapters, however, was retained by the High Lords of Terra, who created a group of 20 Space Marine Chapters known as the Astartes Praeses to monitor the Eye of Terror and prevent the return of the servants of the Ruinous Powers.