Editing Dark Angels (section)

===Great Crusade===
Whilst the First legion took the fight to the horrors in the dark, the younger legions continued to grow in strength to the point that the first were no longer the only angels of the Emperor, now they were only the first amongst equals; this led to a growing resentment towards these upstarts, who had been carefully and safely grown whilst the First had been punching monsters in the face, and who had been gifted with the knowledge and tactics learned from their bloody work.

This would prove to be a mortal blow to the very identity of the First Legion, and they would begin to throw themselves into danger; leeroy jenkins's themselves into the most bloody situations, in the desperate attempt to prove their worth. They would go out of their way to take on the most dangerous of tasks, even if the losses they would sustain were not worth the prize. The first would continue to bleed out, in their desperate attempts to prove themselves until the lion was found and started kicking some sense into them.

In this fashion, acting all on their own without support from the other legions that followed they killed lots of [[Orks]] and other xenos scum for great justice and were once the most numerous and powerful of the legions. Their numbers would be depleted by decades of savage warfare, particularly in the wars of the [[Rangdan Xenocides]] where their numbers fell below 166,000 after they lost almost 50,000 Marines preventing the destruction of the entire northern Imperium by an unknown menace from the outer darkness. The scars of these battles would change them, as would their reunification with their Primarch and his adopted world of Caliban. Unyielding, technologically capable, ruthless, and insular, the Dark Angels by the time of the Heresy were once again a powerful and highly independent Legion used to operating on its own to conduct large scale campaigns and compliance actions. When the Legion was first reunited with their Primarch, the massive influx of warriors into the Legion following the rediscovery of Caliban was able to provide the First with an additional 20,000 new Dark Angels. However, this would not last as just before the Heresy started Luther, who had by then decided Caliban should be free of what he saw as the Imperium’s tyranny, began to starve the legion of any new legionaries, armour, weapons and ammunition. He began by cancelling the deployment of 4212 new recruits to the Legion. He would also reduce the time it took to implant and train new legionaries to about two years, so by mid-heresy there were around 45,000 new Dark Angels on Caliban who were swearing oaths of fealty not to the Emperor but to Caliban and the Order; as these were never deployed to the legion they are not counted as part of the legions over all total, but as a separate force. (Not everyone was pleased with this, especially those who had originated from Terra.)

Some time during the Crusade some planetary ruler insulted [[Leman Russ]] and he got all pissy about it. Then Lion ended up killing the leader and Leman was like "Whatchu do that fo' fool?" because ''he'' wanted to take the bitch-ass out. And Lion was like "fuck off, furry," despite his own furtastic name and his dickish kill-stealing. Leman, never being good with words, reason, or sobriety, megaton punched the Lion. The two of them fought for a day or two, an epic struggle between cool-headed tactician and hot-blooded barbarian, douchebag and bro-tard. Then Leman said "this is stupid" and started laughing... then the Lion knocked him out.

In true [[anime]] fashion, after Leman regained consciousness and was less-inebriated, the two eventually became best buds and treated it as water under the bridge; their respective chapters still carry on the friendly rivalry, a pair of champions engaging in sacred and [[Derp|non-fatal]] honour duels whenever the Spess Lions and [[Space Wolves|Space Corgis]] meet. One particular incident during the Heresy had a member of the watch-pack that had been sent to keep an eye on Guilliman being paired off against the Lion himself after the Wolves pushed the issue. The Lion, who had more important things to do and wanted it over as quickly as possible, stepped forward and nominated himself. The fight (if that’s what you want to call it) was as predictably hilarious as you would imagine it would be. And a couple of light years away, the [[Tyranids]] eat a planet while two of the most important Space Marine chapters waste time on this Nerf-chainsword-duel-honour-bullshit because ''that's how they roll''.