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The Space Wolves are one of the twenty First Founding Legions of Space Marines serving the Imperium of Man in the fictional future of the tabletop wargame Warhammer 40,000.
The Space Wolves Primarch Leman Russ, like all other Primarchs, mysteriously vanished from the Emperor's laboratories in his infancy. He turned up on the distant planet of Fenris, a snow-covered world inhabited by fairly primitive, warlike tribes of humans. He was eventually discovered there by the Emperor, and joined with his Legion of Space Wolves.
He fought well during the Great Crusade, gaining the reputation as a cunning and fierce, as well as slightly unstable, warrior and leader. During a particular battle, he let his rage get the better of him, and wound up in a fist fight with the Primarch of the Dark Angels. This led to a bitter feud between the Legions (and subsequent Chapters), which lasts to this day- although recent events may finally have led to an end to the rivalry.
Just prior to the Horus Heresy, the Space Wolves came into conflict with their brother Space Marines once again. The Primarch of the Thousand Sons Space Marines, Magnus the Red, had ignored the Emperor's command to not dabble in sorcery. The Space Wolves were then ordered by the Emperor to destroy the rogue Legion. The surprise assault upon the Sons' homeworld of Prospero was furious, and rather successful; however, many of the Sons, including Magnus himself, escaped into the wild region of space known as the Eye of Terror. A blood feud still exists between the survivors of the Thousand Sons, who are now dedicated to the Chaos God Tzeentch, and the Space Wolves.
During the Horus Heresy, the Space Wolves were far from Earth, alongside the Dark Angels, and were unable to assist their loyalist brethren in the fighting at the capital world, Terra (the renamed Earth of the future). Knowledge of the imminent arrival of the two Legions, which would tip the balance in favor of the loyalists, pushed Horus into allowing the Emperor to personally attack him in a gamble to swiftly end the war. The two Legions arrived just after the battle concluded, with Horus dead and the Emperor mortally wounded.
Leman Russ was devastated by his inability to save the Emperor. After the war was fully completed, and all resistance was crushed, Russ held a great feast, at which he declared he would be leaving, and would return for the 'final battle'. He then vanished, and is said to have gone into the Eye of Terror to continue hunting down the traitorous Marines who fought against the Emperor during the Horus Heresy. A large portion of the Legion followed him, and became marooned in the Eye until only recently; this lost contigent is known as the 13th Great Company.
The Space Wolves are known for their fiercely anti-authority behavior. They strongly resist the central command structure of the Imperium, and refuse to follow the dictates of the Codex Astartes, which lays the structure and tactics to be used by all Space Marines. Their army has a strong Viking feel to them along with many wolf references, right down to their wolf-like teeth and heightened senses.
They are rather superstitious, and refuse to use some of the technology commonly used by other Chapters, such as teleportation. They use their own unique organization, notably in that their forces tend to be small warbands who fight under a single strong leader, and larger forces will simply be several small warbands joined together, not necessarily under any sort of central command. Their leaders come from an elite corps of troops known as the Wolf Guard. The Legion also is unique in that it was not broken into many Chapters after the Heresy, as the other loyal Legions were; they instead remained divided into many Great Companies, each led by a Wolf Lord who is elected by his peers. However, they still nominally have only the single Legion, rather than the self-sufficient Chapter structure of their fellow Marines.
The Wolves wear blue-grey colored armor with other colors as highlights, notably red and yellow, and often adorned with tokens taken from wolves, such as furs and teeth. The Legion symbol is a silhouette of a snarling wolf.
In the tabletop game of Warhammer 40,000, to properly field a Space Wolves force, one is currently required to have the original Space Marine Codex, as well as the supplemental Space Wolves Codex.
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