Chapter 2: Part 2
The Jackals and Hounds
The VI Legion's reputation amongst the wider forces of the Great Crusade by its second Terran decade was by this point something of a mixed one. They had an unarguable track record of success and had won numerous battle honours, but accusations and stories of unneeded collateral damage and casualties among human civilian populations where they fought were widespread. It was said, long before the influence of Fenris and its culture on the Legion, that there was something of the bestial to the Legion's warriors, something readily apparent in the first foreshadowings of a mark of what was to become later known as the Canis Helix upon them, though insufficient time had yet passed for this to become so very pronounced. More than this, some had concerns that the VI were said to be an internally fractious Legion, ruled more by the strength of its officers than obedience to legitimate authority, and violence and factionalism within the ranks was said to be far too common. This was in an age where the Primarchs themselves, save Horus, had not yet been found to stamp their mark upon their Legion, but the likes of the VIII Legion was already gaining a reputation as the Emperor's agents of terror and fear, and the "unwonted savagery" of the VI was often spoken of alongside the future Night Lords in the symposia of the great and the good of the Great Crusade's hierarchy, with some even warning that the Legion should be closely monitored lest it become uncontrollable. But of all the accusations, perhaps the most cutting was that the VI Legion was never keener to the fight as when an enemy had already broke and fled before it -- when its victims were helpless.
With this came an informal and insulting cognomen for the VI Legion of the "Rout"; a collective noun often used for carrion jackals and the mutated pariah dogs of Terra's dry seas that hounded and preyed upon refugee columns and wastelanders -- creatures brave only when their victims were half-dead or exhausted. Ironically enough, this insult may even have been meant to unfavourably compare the VI to the equally ferocious XII, already become known as the War Hounds, a Legion also renowned for the unbelievable violence of its mettle in battle, but which was at this time held up as an example of honourably controlled fury, its rage directed only at the direst foes and used to overcome the most overmatching odds. This comparison seems now as some macabre joke given the very different paths these Legions were to take and what future history had in store for them -- paths dictated in no small measure by the effect that the finding of their Primarch was to have upon them both. That change, and truly transformative it would prove to be, was not long in coming for the VI Legion.
The Emperor and the Wolf King
Unlike the rediscovery of Horus -- the first Primarch returned to the Imperium -- in the case of Leman Russ, and indeed many of those Primarchs whose rediscovery came after, very few definite facts can be obtained, and with Russ, the matter is further shrouded by a fog of carefully and deliberately crafted allegory and myth. What can be said for certain is that Leman Russ was the second Primarch to make an appearance openly at the Emperor's side, doing so a handful of standard years before the rediscovery of Ferrus Manus on Medusa. Leman Russ had been found upon the Death World of Fenris, a planet itself shrouded in considerable mystery and legend, and like Medusa, known by name to some of the most ancient star charts of the Dark Age of Technology still extant. As the ancient Fenrisian sagas state, it was the Emperor Himself, disguised in a long, plain robe and cloaked in psychic runes of disguise and confusion who entered the long hall of Russ. Those few natives that were sharp-eyed and sober, as well as Russ' companion Fenrisian Wolves, shrunk from this new, powerful presence. Russ refused to pay him homage as the Master of Mankind. The Emperor had known well that proud Russ would never bow to His rule without being beaten in a contest. The Emperor was convinced of His own power, and knew that such a challenge would be as nothing to Him.
The Three Challenges
The strange wanderer approached the gnarled wood of the Wolf Throne and its gargantuan occupant, and stood firm, staring hard at where Russ was presiding over the feast. It was then that the stranger offered His challenge. The nature of the contest was for the Wolf King to decide. If He won, the stranger asked for nothing but to be allowed to drink at the right hand of Russ during the feast. Russ demanded that should the wanderer fail, He would serve at the king's behest for a year. Grimly, the stranger accepted. Russ challenged the Emperor to a series of tests. The Wolf King did not wish to spoil a good feast; his first challenge was to an eating competition. The stranger ate well indeed, consuming many times more than the stoutest warriors present without pause. But when He looked up from His plate, Russ had already consumed three entire aurochs. The stranger had lost the first challenge. But the king was enjoying his sport. He realised that the brown-cloaked traveller had the spirit of a Fenrisian. And so he challenged the outlander to a drinking bout. But by the time the wanderer had reached His sixth barrel of strong Fenrisian mead, there was no more to drink. The Wolf King had drained the entire feast dry. Once again the Emperor had lost. The light of anger appeared in the wanderer's eye.
Driven by disappointment in His offspring, the wanderer called Leman Russ a drunkard and a glutton, able to achieve nothing more in life than stuffing his face and bellowing hollow boasts. The Wolf King calmly laid down the consequences of his last challenge, and his court backed away as one. The court grew silent, daring not even to breathe as Russ drew his great sword from its scabbard and stepped onto the long banqueting table. For the third challenge Russ boasted he could defeat the Emperor in combat. The Emperor threw away His cloak, the hood falling from His face, His true form revealed. He stood far taller than any man present, swathed in light and clad in baroque golden Power Armour. This time, the Emperor defeated Russ, felling Him with a mighty blow from his Power Glove. When Leman came back to consciousness within the hour, he admitted defeat and with a bloodied smile and a broken fang, he swore fealty to his true father, the Emperor of Mankind.
Spiriting the great Wolf King away from Fenris, the Emperor began Russ' tutelage in the ways and technology of His star-spanning Imperium. The Primarch's teaching and training went swiftly; it was only a matter of solar weeks before the Emperor judged Russ worthy of leading His armies in the Great Crusade across the galaxy. Leman Russ was introduced to the warriors of the VI Legion of Space Marines who had been created through the implantation of gene-seed organs that had been grown from his own DNA. And so it came to be that Leman Russ became the father, progenitor and Lord of the newly named Space Wolves Legion of the Legiones Astartes and joined the glorious action of the Great Crusade. He was armed with a thrice-blessed suit of Power Armour and his greatsword was replaced with the legendary Frostblade Mjalnar, whose teeth were torn from the maw of the Great Kraken Gormenjarl and were then used in its forging. Reputably, the blade could cleave the ice mountains of Fenris in half.
With Leman Russ went as many as several hundred Fenrisian warriors who had, despite their age, undergone and survived the implantation and gene-processing required to become Astartes, at least to the greater part. Many had died in the attempt, but far less than might have been expected, and this was for two reasons. The first was the stabilising effect of Leman Russ' own gene-helix pattern over the existing VI Legion gene-seed, which seems to have all but reversed the prior difficulties of candidate survival. The second was that the Fenrisians themselves proved of extraordinarily resilient stock, a factor attributed to long-term human survival on Fenris in general, and that world's own many mysteries. These men were to be Leman Russ' first "Varagyr," rendered sometimes as "Varangii" in Imperial records, or more literally "Wolf Guard." They were Russ' oath-bound warriors, sworn to him even if it meant denying the jaws of death to be at his side, and whose loyalty had seen them leave their world of ice and blood and ascend uncomprehendingly but undaunted to the stars in their lord's footsteps. These Varagyr were valued by their king for this loyalty over the might of the transhuman Astartes of the VI he was given to command, despite their vaunted strength and savage reputation, for they had not yet proven themselves as warriors or earned his respect. This lesson was the first Leman Russ was to teach the VI and an early sign that under the Wolf King's rule, his Legion would be very different to any other.
The Wolves that Stalk the Stars
...as the strands of iron are twisted and hammered together in the forging of a killing blade, so shall we be. I and my oath-sworn have been until now the Wolves of Fenris, and you, cousins of my blood, the Wolves of Terra. Together we shall become the Wolves that Stalk the Stars, and the beasts that crawl and feed in the darkness of the void shall come to fear us, and know themselves hunted.
PRIMARCH LEMAN RUSS SPEAKING TO HIS WARRIORS UPON TAKING THE REIGNS OF LEADERSHIP OF THE VI LEGION
Records which remain about the transition of command in the VI Legion indicate that things went generally smoothly, at least at first. That their Primarch had been the second recovered was a matter both of rejoicing and some pride within the ranks of the Legion, and that their new lord was of barbaric mien was perhaps of less consternation to them given many of the individual Astartes' origins than it otherwise might have.
Russ also was charismatic and readily inspired awe among those he had been given to command, and in a Legion which already respected strength over perhaps anything else, here was a warrior whose strength exceeded any of them by a degree as to seem almost absurd in comparison. Rathvin relinquished command to his Primarch perhaps grudgingly but without open challenge, and if the presence of the Varagyr, who Leman Russ had ordered dispersed partly through the ranks, was cause for some resentment, it was quickly made known that both Russ' rule was not to be questioned, and that the Varagyr were more than willing to offer themselves in single combat to decide any argument over the matter. Before any acrimony could fester, Leman Russ in his wisdom determined to take his Legion into battle so that he, his kinsmen and his gene-sons would spill blood and face death together and so be forged anew as one.
The Wheel of Fire
The target for this first campaign undertaken with his Legion had been carefully selected in council with the Emperor and Horus, and would prove for the VI a true test of its mettle. Their target was a sector of the expanding frontier known as the "Wheel of Fire," to the galactic east of the Segmentum Solar. It was a sprawling wilderness of erratically transiting star systems and burning nebula, wracked by frequent ion and Empyreal tempests and home to at least a score of xenos-occupied worlds, many under the dominion of the Orks, and thereby a source of periodic drifting Space Hulks and marauder attacks into the nascent Imperium. Human occupation in the region was scant, viable resources few and the cost of pacification projected to be high. For this reason the Wheel of Fire had so far been left alone save for a few probing raids, but now the Great Crusade sought again to expand towards the far larger and more dangerous prize of the worlds beyond Seraphina, an area itself controlled by a vast Ork empire. The threat of the Orks of the Wheel of Fire attacking at the Great Crusade's back in support of their kind was a real one, and to negate that threat, the VI would take the Wheel of Fire and purge it, regardless of any cost they would pay.
one of the more notable engagements of this campaign took place at this time. This was a massive joint-Compliance campaign that included multiple Legiones Astartes, including the Iron Warriors and the White Scars, as well as thousands of troops of the Imperialis Auxilia and substantial Mechanicum assets. They were charged with the eradication of the massive Ork horde of WAAAGH! Mashogg. Legends record that it was the Primarchs Leman Russ and Jaghatai Khan who routed the Orks of Overdog Mashogg's WAAAGH!, while Perturabo was featured only as the "comrade" who calculated the optimum way to bypass Mashogg's low orbital defences.
For five standard years the war went on, never letting up in tempo, never abating in fury. Casualties for the Legion both in terms of warriors and in ships were frighteningly high, with almost a full third of the Legion destroyed before it was done and the Wheel of Fire left a graveyard of its war dead. Of the many slain were included the increasingly unstable Commander Enoch Rathvin, crushed in the hydraulic claws of an Ork hell crawler while leading a suicidal charge on Xyat. But for every Astartes who fell, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Orks perished. This was war without quarter, war without relenting; it was not an act of conquest, but of extermination, and was carried out with a ruthlessness and indefatigability that no unaugmented human could have maintained. It was what the VI Legion had been made for, and on the Wheel of Fire, just as Russ had promised, it was re-forged anew.
The old enormities and excesses of which the VI had been accused were themselves made good under Leman Russ. Its blood lust controlled with discipline and iron will, and its rage shackled by duty and oath-sworn loyalty, Russ gave his Legion pride in what it was, pride in the power it wielded, pride even in the monstrous violence which lurked within its heart, but with all this he did not allow them to crave glory for its own sake, nor wallow in the bitter poison of mindless bloodshed. He gave them purpose and he gave them honour, bleak as it was. They served the Emperor and that duty was a sacred one; they were made to be the fangs fastened around the throat of humanity's foes. Just as on Fenris, war was ever slaved to the survival of kith and kin, the galaxy would be made a safe and secure home for human life, even if the Wolves that Stalked the Stars had to wash it clean in blood first.
Warlords of the Imperium
With his mighty Frostblade, Russ would continue to plunge headlong into the fighting at the forefront of every battle, vanquishing all before him. Throughout the long and difficult battles of the Great Crusade, the Space Wolves and their lupine allies drawn from amongst the Fenrisian Wolves were always at the front line. Russ strode at the head of his VI Legion, slaughtering all who dared stand before him, his coming announced by the howling of the pack. Leman Russ fought well during the Great Crusade, gaining a reputation as a cunning and fierce, if slightly unstable, Imperial warrior and Astartes leader. The Great Crusade was still young and the Imperium's wars were yet unwon. Its war machine needed as many warlords of Leman Russ' calibre as it could get, despite that several other Primarchs such as Ferrus Manus, Fulgrim and most lately Rogal Dorn had also now re-joined their Legions. After replenishing their numbers following the Wheel of Fire campaign, the VI Legion was once against ready to answer the call to war. The solar decades that were to follow saw Leman Russ and his Legion participate in scores of successful Compliance actions and military campaigns, both alone and in command of numerous secondary war fleets, regiments of the Imperialis Auxilia and even on several occasions, other bodies of Space Marines whose Primarchs had not yet been found. This period of the Legion's history often goes unremarked but in it can be seen a series of victories that reveal Russ and his Legion to be far more than the savage semi-beasts some later portrayals make them out as, and confirm Russ as a field general of surpassing skill and noteworthy record. Before the VI, xenos domains of the Orks and Aeldari, Taralais and Saharduin all fell, and famously on the ancient Hive World of Nova Borilia, the alien tyranny of the Noman, an enslavement that went back millennia, was destroyed. This last conflict in particular was a celebrated victory, for which the ancient battle tank STC restored to the Imperium in that same campaign was named in Leman Russ' honour by the Mechanicum.
As time passed, the warriors of Russ began to refer to themselves as the Vylka Fenryka -- the "Wolves of Fenris" in the Fenrisian dialect. The VI was now a Legion on who Leman Russ' famous words and the snarling crimson wolf's head badge -- adopted now as the Legion's own -- had long since confirmed the common epithet of "Space Wolves." Much, it was said, to the private consternation of Horus, whose own "Luna Wolves" wore such a similar name first, but seemed the worse fit for it. Most Astartes of the VI Legion bristled at this cognomen as it was the foolish name given to them by offworlders who recognised none of their customs and traditions. But for all the Legion's conquests on the expanding frontier, it was for the Traitor and the turncoat that Russ and his warriors savoured a particular ire. It was for the aftermath of such actions as these and scores of others, of punishment meted out to "oath breakers" whose savagery was named "excessive" even by generals upon whose orders armies went to their graves and worlds were set flame, that the dark tales that had long surrounded the Legion were once more kindled. The stories were fuelled by the increasingly savage disposition and appearance which was starting to take over the Space Wolves, a name which now seemed as much statement as an enunciation of Legion heraldry.
Compliance of Molech
The Space Wolves also took part in the massive Imperial Compliance campaign on the newly discovered Knight World of Molech, which was led by the Emperor Himself, and included multiple Legiones Astartes, including the Luna Wolves, Dark Angels and the White Scars, as well as thousands of troops of the Imperialis Auxilia and assets from the Mechanicum and Legio Titanicus. After achieving victory, Cyprian Devine of House Devine was named Planetary Governor of Molech. In the presence of several of His Primarch sons, the Emperor led them to a Warp portal hidden underground, where He proceeded to enter into the Realm of Chaos to parley with the Ruinous Powers. When He finally returned, the Emperor appeared aged, but much more powerful. He then suppressed His sons' memories of Molech and stationed a large garrison force comprised of nearly 100 Imperialis Auxilia regiments, three Legio Titanicus cohorts, and detachments from two Space Marine Legions to protect the secrets of the Warp portal on Molech.
The Wolf & The Lion
As the Space Marine Legions pushed back the frontiers of the Imperium, each Primarch strove to excel in the eyes of the Emperor and none more so than Leman Russ, Primarch of the Space Wolves. Only Horus Lupercal of the Luna Wolves and Lion El'Jonson of the Dark Angels could claim more victories than Russ and this was a constant frustration for him. It was on the world of Dulan where the Space Wolves were fighting alongside the Dark Angels that matters came to a head. During the pacification war to bring Dulan into Imperial Compliance, the Dark Angels Legion aided the Space Wolves, and the leader of this particular planet insulted Leman Russ' honour. As such, Russ wanted to defeat the leader personally for the insult. The Dark Angels and Space Wolves, both led by their respective Primarchs, assaulted the tower where the leader was located. Leman Russ burst into the throne room just in time to see the Dark Angels' Primarch, Lion El'Jonson, beheading the world's leader with his mighty blade. Angry that the honour was not his, Leman Russ marched up to the Lion and punched him in the jaw. This led to a battle that lasted for a day or more, until finally Russ saw how immature their squabble was and started laughing. Lion El'Jonson took this action to be a direct insult to him because he mistakenly believed that Russ was mocking him with laughter and so he punched Leman Russ once more and knocked his brother Primarch into unconsciousness before leaving the planet in a dark mood with his Legion. This fight led to a bitter feud between the Legions (and the subsequent Chapters), which lasts to this day. Although recent events may finally have led to an end to the rivalry, it is still customary for selected champions from both Chapters to engage in a (usually) non-lethal duel whenever they meet in remembrance of this ancient feud.
Night of the Wolf
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone