The rank of Captain within the Legion also held subtle variations of authority. Generally those in command of a lower numbered company outranked those in a higher numbered company, while those who had once had overall command of a campaign were considered superior to those officers he had commanded during that action. At the top of this informal but very real hierarchy of Legion officers were those Captains who served as Horus' closest advisors and in particular the First Captain of the Legion who commanded the elite 1 st Company and also served as his primarch's principal field officer and second-in-command. The wearing of pelts of such augmented canid predators increasingly marked out the field commanders and officers of the Luna Wolves. The XVI th would not be the only Space Marine Legion to bear such a title and embrace this imagery as their own, but they were the first. Though the Luna Wolves had won many victories in their years of ceaseless conflict, one would eclipse all others and see them reborn once again. The greatest of the nascent Imperium's victories during the high point of the Great Crusade came in the form of the defeat of the largest Ork empire ever encountered. Those captains of the Luna Wolves (and the Sons of Horus after the Legion's name change) who were chosen to serve in the Mournival were generally considered the best officers of the Legion by their fellow Battle-Brothers. In general, each of the four members of the Mournival were chosen because they each possessed very different personalities and characteristics that were intended to complement one another and provide the Warmaster with a wide array of different viewpoints.

The Mournival was broken during the Battle of Istvaan III as the majority of the four Traitor Legions at Istvaan III turned on the Loyalist Space Marines who remained within their ranks, and Loken and Torgaddon faced off against Abaddon and Aximand just before Horus' 63rd Expeditionary Fleet began its final orbital bombardment of the Loyalists' positions and ended the battle. Loken and Torgaddon were believed to have died during that bombardment, though Loken survived to later serve the Emperor as one of Malcador the Sigilite's special Space Marine covert agents known as the Knights-Errant. Tarik Torgaddon (Deceased) - Tarik Torgaddon was the captain of the 2 nd Company and a member of the Mournival who remained loyal to the Emperor when the Sons of Horus turned to Chaos. Torgaddon was killed during the Battle of Isstvan III when he was beheaded by his fellow Mournival member Horus Aximand. His headless body was often used as an imaginary interlocutor in the mad ravings of Garviel Loken, the only survivor of the battle on Isstvan III who would later be recovered by the former Death Guard Battle-Captain Nathaniel Garro to serve in the secret organisation known as the Knights-Errant.

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Guljuk Ygethddon - Sergeant Ygethddon commanded a Despoiler Squad of the 9 th Battle Company, 2 nd Battalion.

Seeker Squads - Seeker Squads were comprised of a specialised force of Space Marines whose principal task on the battlefield was to identify an enemy's command structure, its warlords, officers, priests, demagogues, whatever form they took, and slay them with a well-placed bolt round while the battle raged round them. The Alpha Legion are said to have first crystallised the use of this tactic and squad configuration, which had with the Emperor's approval spread to the other Legions, although its use sat poorly within the combat doctrine and martial culture of some like the Space Wolves. Equipped with special issue ammunition to assist their efforts, Seeker Squads were primarily composed of the finest shots within the Legion, as a Seeker strike force often only had a small window of opportunity to take down its targets at close range, rather than enjoying the luxury of distance. The XVI th Legion was originally known as the Luna Wolves during the Great Crusade. In honour of Horus' great achievements during the latter years of that era after the Imperial victory over the Orks during the Ullanor Crusade, the Emperor suggested that the Legion be renamed the " Sons of Horus" to honour his most beloved son's accomplishments.Refusing to believe that Horus, his most beloved and trusted son, would actually betray him, the Emperor instead mistakenly perceived the traitor to the Imperium to be Magnus and his Thousand Sons, who had long suffered from a near-debilitating run of mutations because of the instability of Magnus' own genome and were known to have practiced the sorcery that had been expressly outlawed in the Imperium at the Council of Nikaea several Terran years before. Horus personally faced off with the Nurglite mutant that had been Temba aboard the grounded ruins of his Imperial Cruiser. In the course of that battle, the potent living metal of the Chaos blade wielded by that plague-infused monstrosity left Horus with a bleeding, toxic wound in his shoulder that his Legion's Apothecaries could not heal despite all the advanced technology available to them. Ikon (Eclipse-class Battlecruiser) - The Ikon was a figure of dread in the days of the early Horus Heresy-era as it acted as an outrider to Traitor forces within the Cyclops Cluster, enforcing Dark Compliances on worlds such as Gethsamaine and Taracanis and delivering the Warmaster's ultimatum to scores of other worlds. Most notoriously it was the Ikon's captain that was responsible for the anarchic developments on the word of Moab, which entered history as the Sorrow of Moab. The XVI th Legion was originally a flexible fighting force, able to adapt to almost any combat situation. The Legion possessed an efficient chain of command, which fell into disarray after its primarch, Horus, was killed during the Battle of Terra. In the years immediately following the end of the Horus Heresy, the Sons of Horus' discipline broke down completely, as the Legion dissolved into a number of competing warbands of Chaos Space Marines, each led by a different Chaos Champion who maintained his rule through the favour of the Dark Gods and often lethal discipline. Erebus gifted the weapon to the Chaos-corrupted form of Temba who the Warmaster had left behind on the Feral World of Davin sixty Terran years before. Temba had turned to the worship of Nurgle in the interim, being transformed into a bloated mutant and killing off most of his Imperial Army garrison in the process, transforming them into undead Plague Zombies that the newly renamed Sons of Horus were forced to mow down in waves.

The XVI th Legion's homeworld, the ancient Mining World of Cthonia, no longer exists, having apparently lost geo-structural integrity and broken apart into asteroids and debris during the centuries following the Horus Heresy. Certainly the once ore-rich planet was riddled with mine workings right through to its dead core as the numerous gangers that formed the majority of the world's population may originally have been imported as work teams to maintain the crumbling tunnels. Thus, many of the original XVIth are believed to have had a separate, somewhat unusual origin; they were effectively kidnapped from the world of Cthonia by 'recruitment squads' sent from Terra charged with the task of rounding up thousands of individuals from the violent gan Kloros Endall - Lieutenant Endall was a Terran-born veteran of the XVI th Legion. He was a part of the first wave of Loyalists during the assault on Isstvan III's Choral City, and was presumably slain during the subsequent betrayal.This inability to replace losses is a problem that afflicted all of the Traitor Legions as the Heresy progressed. Today, it drives them to seek out uncorrupted Imperial Space Marine gene-seed stores whenever possible. As the Imperial Warmaster, Horus took over command of the Great Crusade, and accepted his new duties with earnest dedication. However, there was much dissension in the ranks of the primarchs and other parties in the Imperium over the Emperor's decision to withdraw from the campaign and return to Terra as well as to reorganise the political administration of the Imperium under the control of a Council of Terra headed by His regent, Malcador the Sigillite. Only a handful of the primarchs, amongst them a scheming Lorgar, remained steadfast beside the Warmaster during this period of conflict. The First Pacification of Luna in 703.M30 was perhaps the most famous of these early victories for the XVI th Legion, but the breaking of the Coriolis Enclaves and the Five Winter left scars in the collective consciousness of Terran society that persist even now. In the Capridian Sinks, it is still common for traders and gamblers to refer to the Legion's ancient number of sixteen as "the counting of the wolf." Long an upwardly mobile officer, and friend to senior Captain Tarik Torgaddon, Garviel Loken was inducted into the Mournival after the pacification of Sixty-Three-Nineteen, the first Mournival member not to be a 'son of Horus', the term for those Luna Wolves who bore a facial similarity to their Primarch. [1b]