Changes

Unlike the fleets of the [[Legionnes Astartes]], [[Explorator Fleet]], and [[Rogue Trader]]s, these fleets were defensive in nature, able to be piecemealed into smaller commands as needed and were manned by [[Solar Auxilia]] almost exclusively, without any [[transhuman]] components, and outside the typical command structure of the great crusade. Their [[Grand Admiral]]s and [[Lord Marshall]]s operated under orders directly from the [[Council on Terra]], and were equal or greater in authority to the [[Lord Commander]]s of individual planets their ships protected. Of course, in practice, it was a foolish Grand Admiral that did not defer to a Primarch or an emissary of the Terran Court or Mars, but this represented a growing distance between the nascent Imperium's forces of conquest and those of defense. As such, the Traitors influence on these forces in the opening of the Horus Heresy were lessened. This would be demonstrated during the [[Horus Heresy]] where those traitor elements of Port Maw's Warfleet that turned were conducted by a minority mutiny or by cadre's of traitor officers, rather than wholesale forces swearing to the Warmaster.{{Fn|3e}}

===Horus Heresy===