Pre Heresy Legion Organization

Well, I belive that this need a proper thread. I've been thinking in how a legio is structured and organized. There are many holes here and I hope that with your help we can fill this holes.

This is a quote from this topic:
I go for Century [consensus in the absence of a better term for Company divisions].in the Company divisions and organization.
I'm wondering the same about the WE Captains, if they are more or less the equivalent of a Chapter Master, what is the equivalent of a captain? I guess we actually don't have any. But if we go a little forward on time to the Space Crusade/Rogue Trader era --not crusade/pre heresy era I know, is post heresy, I'm guessing the scourge era (or whatever is called) mainly because at least in Space Crusade, there are no Chapters yet, but Legiones Astartes-- We have some nice ranks:

Lieutenant Comander - In charge of ? (not sure about this one).
Captain - In charge of the Company
Lieutenant - In charge of the Century
Sargent - In charge of a squad



About the Century composition... I asume too that a Century is 1000 marines standard (like current Chapters). So we have that in the Legion squads may larger, like in C:CSM.

Here is a speculation about:

1 Veteran squad (always deploy in demi-squads; chosen/terminators) of 20 marines.
2 Tactical squad of 20 marines each.
1 Assault squad of 20 marines (can be on foot (berzerkers) or with jet-pack (raptors)).
1 Havoc squad of 20 marines.

Total 100 marines.

This is for a Battle Century, I guess that for Assault Century the composition varies like the 8th Company of any 40k SM Chapter, also for Havoc Centuries.

Back in the Century composition, has outcome to be the same with minor changes than a 40k SM Battle Company by chance. Some people can o can not agree with this. I would agree but not sure yet. Is clean, simple and in the GW style but...

I see the WE legions with heavy roman-esque martial influences --besides their Spartacus primarch-- and I'm very happy about the "Century", but always can dive just a little deep more.

A Roman Legio it consisted of 10 cohors (after Marius) labelled I to X, in a very similar way as how the Legiones Astartes consisted. Each cohors (company) is formed by 3 maniples (Regiment?) and each maniple is formed by 2 century, except the first cohors It consists of five double centuries. I can see a nice patter here.

Unlike Roman Legion, the Astartes was not armed in the same way. We have heavy weapons specialists, special weapons and tactics, scouts... Oh, like Roman Legion.

So, the point is, is fine now (the quoted sketch organization) or can we go for something more? I mean, Khârn's company is supposed an assault company. Maybe I'm wrong but I can asume that to be an assault company equals to lots of assault marines, with some tactical and heavy support but maybe in a minor flavour.

An analogy (I'm very upset of my level of english) can be that Legio=Chapter so Company = Company so Century = Squad... hum... Better if I leave the analogies to others.

What I'm trying to express is the fact of a Company is not Chapter-like because the ancient battles were very large scale and the Companies work together --This is a take on too-- but with some autonomous operational capability. Repeat, I guess.

I mean:

|
+8th (Assault) Company
| +Century I
|  |  +Veteran squad
|  |   |
|  |  +Veteran squad
|  |   |
|  |  +Assault squad
|   |     |
|   |    +Assault squad
|   |     |
|   |    +Assault squad
|   |     |
|   |    +Assault squad
|   |     |
|  |    +Tactical squad
|   |     |
|  |    +Tactical squad
|   |     |
|   |    +Heavy Weapons squad
|   |     |
|   |    +Heavy Weapons squad
|   |     |
|   |    +Scout squads (undefined unit numbers)
|   |
[..]
    | 
    +9th (Heavy Support) Company[...]

This is very like Codex Astartes, I know, but is that true that Guilliman does not invented nothing. Well, we can go now on other units in the Legion/Century organization (taked of Insignium Astartes).

Command Squads support units: Lieutenant, Apothecary, Chaplain, Standard Bearer, Land Raider, Rhinos.
Veteran Squads support units: Dreadnoughts, Rhinos, Land Raiders.
Tactical Squads & Assault Squads support units: Dreadnoughts, Rhinos, Land Speeders, Bikes.
Havoc Squads support units: Dreadnoughts, Rhinos.
Scout Squads, Bikes.

Other units or vehicles belong to the Headquarters: Armoury (Predators, Venerable Dreadnoughts, Drop Pods, Dreadclaws, Techmarines), Librarium (Librarians of all kinds), Reclusiam, Officers and so on. Also the Captain of the Company and his personal Command Squad/Honour Guard.

Legion and Century basic heraldry.

Quoted from Insignium Astartes:

"These shoulder pads show the basic Company heraldries. These had their origin in the days when Space
Marines were organised into Legions, formations many times larger than the current Chapter. It may have
been that these patterns were originally used to differentiate between the sub-units of those vast regiments.
These heraldries now form the basic liveries for the Company Captains and are displayed on the Captain's right
shoulder pad and back banner. Veteran Captains are unlikely to display such markings as their personal honours and merit awards will supplant the basic design."

  

 Actually, we can see this pattern in post-Heresy chapters Company Banners, like the Blood Angels 3rd Company -just the pattern, not the colors- so we can easily extrapolate those patterns to the Company Banners, just changing the basic colors and adapting them to the Legion's colors, ie World Eaters Company Banners would be White and Blue.

Taking that and the Chapter Company Colors we can make some nice banners. Those are for the VIII Assault Company:

This are just roughly samples, not the final artwork. From here we can easily imagine the personal banners of the Lieutenants and Sargeants of the squad with bits of his personal heraldry, aswell the Company Banner with the Captain's personal heraldry.

Squad Markings

Providently, the World Eaters have a well documented artwork here, alas not complet.

Tactical Squad Markings 

We have just a Rhino tactical markin here, other images showing marines have nothing in respect of shoulder pad markings. Other rhinos come without markings so we can choose if we want to mark the tactical "arrow" or not.

Assault Squad Markings

 

Here we can see some squads without markings, but several with squad markings. The Assault Squad Marks are, as we can see, almost identical at the post-Heresy Codex-adherent Chapters. Note that the squad markings are in red, if you want to do other markings like the Tacticals or Havocs. Also, the Berserkers wear the Assault Squad marking meaning that they are, basically, non-jump packeted Assault Squads. Two of the images show gold-trimmeds shoulder pads, and I guess that are Command or Honour Guard Squads.

Besides the official quotes and images, nothing stated here is in any way canon, and nothing of that have been possible without the unvaluable help of Horn, Magos Explorator, The Red Sorcerer, Gagoc The Ancient and Shroudfilm of The Great Crusade forums.

Comments and Criticism welcome.