Unification War Regiments

All this talk of places on Terra no one has mentioned the great continent size floating city plates .What do these look like ?

But weren't these floating cities built after the Unification?

I know i'm disrupting the natural flow of things here, forgive me i've been off the forum for ages .

To the original point, or at least one of them;
Is it possible that the Emperor ordered the Custodes to destroy the remaining Thunder Warriors in their last battle, a sort of 'rearguard of Custodes allow the Thunder Warriors to defeat the foe and them wipes out the survivors'?

Pretty sure the Custodes were around at the later battles of the Thunder Warriors...

As for the floating plates, this is what I have gleaned from other posts here on TGC and from the books, can't remember where from, but I collated some of the info about Terra a few months ago (To which I will now add Apologists latest post!) and this was in my Super Orbital Plates bit.


Super Orbital Plates

Lemurya, gliding over a city called Sanantwun in a north-western direction. Most likely somewhere in old-europe. It radiates artificial light, very bright, after the sun has set down.

Gondavana. After Lemurya has slid out of view, the immense "moonshadow" of Gondavana was passing east to west over the same city. Like a giant cyclonic pattern. Vaalbara was crossing beneath it, south-west to north-east.

Vaalbara. A slightly smaller one. Mentioned as "ghost" so maybe a dead, or lost one like underhives are lost to the imperium in a way.

Rodinia. Gliding under Lemurya when the character is aboard lemurya. No further info.

Later it's said that the superorbital plates have artificial gravity, so a hint that they indeed are out of the atmosphere.

Hope this helps.

Do you think these orbital plates could be anything to do with the Roma ?

In my opinion, no.

I think the plates were made after unification, and that Vaalbara was made a 'ghost' by Terran separatists blowing it up or some such.

But that's just my musings.

I'd like to think that the battle honour 'ROMA' won by the Imperial Fist and mentioned in the Index Atsrrtes article could be connected.Perhaps they got the task of cleansing one of these flying cities.

Note that Astartes have already been fighting on Terra during the final years of the Unification Wars. Since the Astartes were created after the Primarchs, it means that the Primarch Project already happened during the Unification Wars.

The Legions as we know them might have been formed already as well, or some of them have been selected to be led by Primarchs later on.

Note that the Blood Angels also fought during the Unification Wars:

Fear to Tread - James Swallow (2012)

Regarding the orbital plates, I think the 'ghost' description might simply be a tongue-in-cheek reference. The names are too close to real world geology to be much else, but I think naming the superorbital plates after ancient supercontinents is very fitting

Gondavana – Gondwana, a supercontinent.

Rodinia – Rodinia; a supercontinent that pre-dated Gondwana.

Vaalbara – Vaalbara; a supercontinent that pre-dated Rodinia... hence the fact it's a 'ghost'.

Lemurya – This is a bit different, as Lemuria is a (discredited) theoretical landmass in the Indian ocean. It's popular with occultists and the like today as a sort of Atlantis/lost country.

+++
Sanantwun – well, this struck me as a Grimdark San Antonio in Texas, which I believe is pronounced 'San Antwun'. That'd leave me to suspect Lemuria is scooting over what remain of the present-day USA during the passage in question.

No, it iis definitley pronounced as it is written. But I like the idea of the orbital plate being over the Merican Hive Spires.

Oi, found some new orbital plates in Fear to Tread, at least I assume they're that.


Orbital plates: Riga and Skye

Seems like Skye would be over Scotland and England, due to the name, and Riga would be over Eastern Europe, or Latvia, once again, due to name.

In Fear to Tread a Blood Angel tells Sanguinius that the Red Tear (Blood Angels flagship) was part of the Emperor's grand fleet before the Great Crusade.

This means several things:
-The Emperor already had a fleet before the Great Crusade, meaning that after/during the Unification Wars he moved to space to construct a vast fleet.
-The time period between the Unification Wars and the Great Crusade might have been longer than first assumed. This means that it's not that the Unification Wars end, immediately followed by the Great Crusade.

Another possibility, as Shroud seems to have suggested, is that the Unification Wars not only covers Terra but the entire Sol system. However, many BL literature seems to hint that the Unification Wars were only to unite Terra.

First, the Grand Fleet could have been an Orbital Defence Fleet. Terra was subjected to attacks and raids from Xenos and ven the Mechanicum.

But there are a few old sources, as well as hints from the novels, that indicate that the Unification Wars spread through the Solar System during their final phase.

But a defense fleet whilst the planet is still at full civil war and with no real resources to do this sort of thing?

And then also ships such as the Red Tear? I could imagine smaller ships, but not something as the battlebarge of a Primarch.

Don't forget, a lot of the equipment and ships were (far) older than the Unification Wars - leftovers from the Age of Technology. Same goes for Titans.

Some are, some aren't. Titans have been around for way longer, many of the ships are a bit of a mystery, but could of course be retconned. The BFG background seems to suggest that the post-Heresy Imperium is rather innovative when it comes to space ship technology, but for some reason all those ships turn traitor (surprising since the Imperium gave those ships very evil sounding classifications). But despite this capability they seem to have a hard time building Terminator armour...

In Prospero Burns, doesn't Kasper encounter Astartes doing Unification-esque things on Terra after the beginning of the Great Crusade, like the encounter with the Thousand Sons? Or is that before the Great Crusade begins?

I thought the Thousand Sons were on some sort of pacification mission on Terra during the Great Crusade. Kind of funny that Terra seems to be the most unstable world despite being the Imperium's capital.