Shattered Legions - Command Hierarchy: Regardless of the circumstances of its coming into being, it is unlikely that any heterogeneous Astartes body would have remained a cohesive force without the leadership of a strong-willed or charismatic commander. Separated from their primarchs, such forces had much to overcome and few survived long without some other surrogate liege.Shadrak Meduson was far from the only Legiones Astartes officer who was able to draw together elements from several different Legions into a single, effective force, and each had their own way of doing so.Some Shattered Legion commanders were warriors of singular vision or unique wisdom, able to meld their forces into a coherent whole with just a word alone. Others led by example, inspiring their forces to emulate their deeds. Some were tyrants, however, enforcing their right to lead with threats or with brutal punishment.In their chains of command, the constituent elements of the Shattered Legion forces generally adhered to the inter-Legion codes put down at the outset of the Great Crusade. These codes defined an equivalency of rank between commanders of different Legions so that mixed forces could operate side by side in the wars to unify Mankind.These codes recognised such ranks as praetor, centurion, sergeant and many others, even though officers in question might be known by myriad different titles drawn from the culture of their own Legion or the homeworld from which it recruited. Even in the aftermath of whatever great betrayal or disaster had brought them into being, the inter-Legion codes remained largely intact and so even in forces constituted from multiple Legions, a default chain of command already existed.Given the trauma to which many Astartes officers had been subjected by the Heresy, the transition was often far from smooth and the divergent command styles frequently sat ill, but in the main, a potent leader was able to command in a manner broadly in line with the long-established Space Marine Legion standard.Because Legion ranks were invariably kept intact, it was not uncommon for Shattered Legion forces to feature an uneven proportion of officers and Legionaries from different Legions. For example, a praetor might be accompanied by but a single squad of his own Legion, but by dint of his rank have command over an entire company of warriors drawn from another Legion, themselves led by no officer with rank higher than centurion.Other Shattered Legion groups were heavily dominated by a single faction, but had far smaller contingents from several other Legions in their ranks. As the Horus Heresy progressed, it became evident that the Traitors had their own Shattered Legion forces, though often brought into being under somewhat different circumstances.Many were simply forces cut off from their own Legions and pursuing existing orders for fear of censure or worse. Some Traitor forces appeared to have come into being as some manner of punishment, cast into exile and instructed not to return until some grave task was completed, often the execution of scattered Loyalist survivors.Thus Shattered Legion formations made of mixed Astartes forces were to be found on both sides of Mankind's galactic civil war, engaging in ceaseless, unseen and bitter shadow wars throughout the Horus Heresy and beyond.