War Hounds - Notable Campaigns: Sa'afrik Liberation (Unknown Date.M30) - The XIIth Legion's first recorded engagement was during the Sa'afrik Liberation of the Unification Wars where they served as a spearhead of shock troops, mounting direct annihilation assaults on enemy forces, both in open battle and fortified positions. They proved 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 in the conflict the nascent XIIth Legion seems to have been largely held in reserve by the Emperor during the later Unification Wars.Pacification of the Cephic Hives (Unknown Date.M30) - The Pacification of the Cephic Hives was another early campaign of the XIIth Legion during the latter days of the Unification Wars. The Emperor Himself dubbed the XIIth Legion His "War Hounds" at this time as a tribute to the savage and tenacious way they fought to pacify the narco-sprawls of the Cephic Hives.Cerberus Insurrection (Unknown Date.M30) - The newly dubbed War Hounds were tasked alongside the Terran XXIInd Dracos Regiment of the Imperial Army to subdue the asteroid prison colony of Cerberus which had risen up in anarchic revolt in a state of near continuous rioting and mob violence. Initial attempts to impose order by Terran troops had been thrown back in disarray as it became apparent that among the insurrectionists was a renegade cadre of outlawed Thunder Warriors, long believed dead, calling themselves the Dait'Tar. With many of the Space Marine Legions already assigned to the first Expeditionary Fleets of the Great Crusade and en route to the stars, the Emperor Himself dispatched His War Hounds to Cerberus with explicit instructions to reclaim Cerberus colony and carry the Emperor's wrath to those that had defied Him. Within five hours, a signal was received from Praetor-Commander Calyb Hax of the XIIth Legion that Cerberus-Primary had been returned to Imperial Compliance. When asked by the leader of the waiting second wave how many prisoners to expect to transfer into custody, Hax replied that he had not been ordered to take any. The second wave of Imperial Army troops were tasked with the bleak task of clear-up operations in the wake of the War Hounds' assault, hunting down any survivors hiding in the warren of tunnels and passageways, of which there proved to be precious few. There were multiple reports of more than once coming across the hulking carcass of an armoured Thunder Warrior, often with three or four of his number in Astartes dead around him, of choke-points and defence posts turned into blood-soaked charnel houses and of scores upon scores of insurgents cut down from behind while fleeing in blind panic, their weapons abandoned.Nove Shendak Campaign (World Eight-Two-Seventeen) (Unknown Date.M30) - Nove Shendak was a world of worms; giant creatures, intelligent. Hateful. Their weapons were filaments, metal feathers that they embedded in themselves to conduct energies out of their bodies. The surface would roil with the filaments before the worms broke out of it almost at the Imperial defenders' feet. Thick as a man, longer that a person was tall. They had three mouths in their faces, a dozen teeth in their mouths. They spoke through the mud in sonic screams and witch-whispers. Early in the Great Crusade, the War Hounds Legion had found three star systems under their thrall, burned them out of their colony nests and chased them home. But on their cradle-world the XIIth Legion had found Humans. Humans lost to Humanity for who knows how long, crawling on the land while the worms slithered in the marsh seas. Hunting the Humans, farming them. Killing them. The War Hounds, alongside their fellow Astartes Legion the Iron Warriors, and a large contingent of Imperial Army soldier were charged with exterminating the worms and liberating the Humans of this world. Fighting the worms was next to impossible as the lunar tides dragged the mud oceans to and fro across the jagged stone continents, making the ground very unstable. The Imperial forces had to use sentries with high-powered lasguns to read the movements of the mud to hear the worms moving through it towards them. Explosives were seeded around the earthworks and allowed to sink to where the worms burrowed. Perturabo had his Iron Warriors build earthworks. They built trenches and dykes, penned in the mud seas and drained them, drove the worms back, reclaimed land the wretched Humans could build on. And when the worms came out to fight the Imperials, they met the Emperor and His War Hounds. Though the casualties were horrendous, the War Hounds eventually emerged triumphant.