hh2节译：午夜领主军团组织结构

The inheritance of Nostramo coiled throughout the structure of the Night Lords. Outwardly they followed a pattern close to many other Legions, but behind this basic skeleton: the courts of Nostramo, the gang traditions and aesthetics of terror infused every aspect of the Legion. Callous and brutal though they were, the Night Lords were not without pride, and the trappings and titles of aristocracy and dominion formed a key part of their identity, and rivalry, often violent, was endemic among the Legion. There were few amongst their ranks who did not bear some form of title, and the craftsmanship with which they embellished their weapons and armour was remarkable, if grotesque. Furthermore, far more so than even the most barbarous members of the World Eaters or White Scars Legions, they habitually adorned their armour and vehicles with the brutalised and mutilated remains of those who had resisted them, and made an art of flaying and presenting the dead in order to sow fear in their foes. There was method in this madness, at least at first; such grisly displays were a clear signal saying “This fate will be yours to share”.

永夜世界诺斯特拉姆的遗产盘绕贯通了午夜领主军团的组织结构。表面上，他们遵循与其他其他军团相近的模式，但在这具基本框架的背后，诺斯特拉姆的宫廷、帮派传统和恐惧美学灌输到了军团的每个方面。虽然他们冷酷而残暴，但午夜领主们也是高傲的阿斯塔特，装饰物、贵族头衔和支配权组成了他们身份的关键部分，而竞争（通常是暴力性质的）也在军团中流行。几乎没有午夜领主战士不会拥有某种形式的头衔，而且他们装饰武器和动力甲的技艺也是引人注目的——虽然也是丑陋古怪的。另外，他们习惯性地用抵抗他们的敌人那被残忍凌虐和严重损坏的残骸来装饰自己的载具和动力甲，并且创造了一种剥皮和展示死者的艺术——用于在敌人心中散播恐惧，做出这些行径的午夜领主们甚至比白疤或吞世者军团中最为野蛮的成员们还要残忍暴虐得多。至少在一开始，这种疯狂的行为也是有用途的：这种可怕的显示是一个清晰的信号——汝之宿命，敬上于此。

At the squad level the Night Lords fielded a broad range of units, though taken as a whole the number of breacher and siege configured squads were proportionally rarer than in other Legions. The Night Lords also had a number of unique units: the infamous Terror squads, whose sole purpose was to create and embody a state of horror in their enemies，and the Night Raptors, who would soar above their enemies trailing the bloody remains of their kills while shrieking from modified vox casters. Almost all squads within the Legion had a name that they used in place of the simple designation. So it was that squads within a company might be referred to as Claws, Talons or a number of other epithets often coupled with an indication of hierarchy or honorific: Stygian Talon, Tenth Claw，The Fifth Oathed, to name but a few amongst thousands. The Company was the basic strategic deployment within the Night Lords Legion and each squad belonged to a company which might number anywhere between 100 and 1,000 warriors. Most companies had a title in addition to their numeric designation. The 27th Company were (their names in translation from the Nostraman) The Shattered Skull，the 104th“The Sable Brothers”， the 71st “The Crimson Judges” and so on. Unlike many others, the Night Lords used battalions and chapters as semi—permanent grouping of companies, rather than a universal structure favouring their own divisions. This seemingly byzantine complexity masked a surprisingly efficient and flexible approach to warfare which allowed the Legion to operate with a high degree of fluidity and to be readily fractured into autonomous units or combined into ad hoc formations as their master dictated.

在小队层面上，午夜领主们部署了各式各样的部队，不过总体来看，午夜领主的破障与攻城配置小队的数量在比例上少于其他军团。午夜领主也有许多独一无二的单位：声名狼藉的恐惧小队，他们唯一的目标就是在敌人中制造和形成恐惧的状态；还有就是黑夜猛禽，他们会拖着被他们杀死的对手的血腥残骸从敌人头上滑翔而过，同时从声音投射器中放出尖叫声。军团中几乎每个小队都有一个用于代替简单称号的姓名，所以在一个连队中，小队可能被称为烈爪、利爪或者许多其他通常与等级和敬语相关的绰号：冥河利爪、第十烈爪、第五誓约者，我们仅在此举出数千个名称中的几个作为例子。连队是午夜领主军团中的基本战略部署单位，而且每个小队都属于一个人数在100到1000之间的连队，多数连队都有一个编号称呼之外的头衔，（例如）第27连队是“破碎颅骨”（把他们的名字从诺斯特拉姆语翻译过来之后），第104连队是“丧服兄弟”，第71连队是"猩红判官"，等等。不同于其他许多军团，午夜领主军团将战斗营和战团作为连队们的暂时性集群，而非一种有利于其自身分散作战的普遍性结构。这种看似拜占庭式的复杂性掩盖了令人惊讶的高效而灵活的战争方法：军团在作战时具备了高流动灵活性，而且准备着根据主子们的命令分散为独立的单位或组合成专门的编队

Legion Command Hierarchy

军团指挥等级体系

Konrad Curze was the Dark King of his Legion, a figure of fear for his sons as much as an object of loyalty. That many were genuinely loyal to him cannot be doubted, but as many seem to have been bound to him by fear rather than adoration, and some hated their gene-sire. Curze appeared not to have cared so long as when he commanded, all obeyed.

康拉德 科兹乃是第八军团的黑暗君王，对他的子嗣们而言，午夜幽魂是恐惧的具象，同样是效忠的对象。很多第八军团的战士毫无疑问是由衷地忠诚于原体，但也有很多人似乎是因为恐惧而非崇拜才依附于他，而某些人则是仇恨着自己的基因生父。不过科兹似乎并不在意这些情况，因为他进行指挥时所有人都会遵命。

Around him the Dark King maintained a court of his most useful sons. The Kyroptera and its members were drawn from senior officers across the Legion and transcended rank. All had a quality that Curze found valuable, though in some cases that quality seems to have been little more than distilled bitterness and cruelty. Membership of the Kyroptera gave no absolute rank, but the fact remained that they were the ruling elite of the Night Lords, and so few others would openly disobey a command from one of them.Alongside these served the Atramentar. A company-strength formation equipped with Terminator armour and armed with the Legion's finest weapons, they were the personal command of the First Captain of the Night Lords and enforcers of order. Renowned for their cold brutality in battle and their unswerving loyalty to their Commander and their Primarch, they seem to have acted as a check on the many fractious elements within the Legion, and though this cannot now be confirmed, it is widely thought that they served as Curze's need arose.

黑暗君王在自己身边保有了一个由他最有能力的子嗣们组成的宫廷。夜蝠议会及其成员是从整个军团的高级军官中挑选而出的，他们的地位身份超越了军衔等级。他们都有着科兹发现的某种有价值的特质，虽然这种特质在某些情况下似乎只不过是提炼过的苦涩和残忍。夜蝠议会的成员们未必给予完全独立的军衔，但事实上他们就是午夜领主军团的统治精英们，几乎也没有其他军团成员会公开违抗某位夜蝠议会尊主的指挥。黑甲卫们随侍着夜蝠议会，这支部队拥有一个连队的兵力，他们装备了终结者动力甲和军团中最为优良的武器，他们是午夜领主军团第一连长的私人部队与命令执行者。他们因在战斗中的冷酷残暴和对于他们的指挥官和原体的坚定忠诚而著称，他们似乎充当了对军团内部许多难以控制的因素（机仆：刺头）的检查制止者，尽管目前尚不能确定，但人们普遍认为当科兹有需要时，他们便会效劳。

Beneath the Kyroptera were the many captains of the companies. The few of these that had been graced with leading several companies under the banner of a battalion or chapter went by a variety of inconsistent ranks including commander, master and regent, amongst others. While these exalted leaders had clear command over the units placed under them, their authority in the Legion as a whole seems to have been more malleable. A regent might have a handful of captains under his command, but be subject to the commands of a different captain if that captain were of the Kyroptera, or exalted in some other way.

夜蝠议会之下是各连队的连长们，其中有极少数人被给予了在战斗营或者战团的旗帜下领导多个连队作战的荣誉，这些人拥有多种前后不一的军衔，包括指挥官、战团长和摄政官，以及其他。虽然这些显赫得意的领袖们对其麾下的部队有明确的命令，但他们在军团中的权威似乎更具延展性。一位摄政官可能指挥着几名连长，但如果另一位连长是夜蝠议会的成员或以其他方式享有更为显赫的地位，摄政官也要臣服于他的指挥。

Just as squads and companies bore names to set them apart from each other, so too did the commanders of the Legion adorn their names with secondary monikers and titles. Many of these titles had echoes in the cursed nobility and gangs of Nostramo: Talonmaster, the Bloodless, or the Sightless Revenant. A few were no doubt calculated insults that either stuck or were adopted by their bearers out of perversity.

就像小队和连队拥有把自己与彼此区分开了的名称，军团的指挥官们也会用次级绰号和头衔装饰他们的名字。许多此类头衔都在诺斯特拉姆那些被诅咒的贵族和帮派中有着回响：利爪主宰、无血者或者无明游魂。一些头衔毫无疑问是精心策划的侮辱，它们要么被接受的，要么就是被所有者们出于乖僻而采纳。

War Disposition

战争配置

At the time of the Dropsite Massacre, the Night Lords had been teetering on the edge of renegade status for several years. Apparently fighting their own wars with little or no regard or contact with the rest of the Great Crusade’s chain of command, it had been some time since an accurate survey of their strength had been made. Estimates of the strength of the Legion therefore vary wildly. Some put their numbers at a little over 90,000, others at closer to 120,000. The Legion was known to have continued recruiting from subjugated worlds throughout the later part of the Great Crusade, in some cases stealing away the youth of entire systems as the base from which to winnow suitable aspirants. The use of rapid psycho-conditioning and accelerated gene-seed implantation was also known to be widely practiced by the Night Lords, further supporting suggestions that their numbers were at least on a par with many of the more numerous Legions. It is also likely that a number of Night Lords elements were not at the Isstvan system, but were engaged in other self-selected actions in the unconquered corners of the galaxy.

到登录点大屠杀时，午夜领主军团几年来一直处于叛逃状态的边缘。显然，他们在进行着自己的战争，对大远征指挥系统很少或根本没有考虑或联系过，自从对他们的兵力进行了准确的调查以来，这种情况已有一段时间了。因此，我们对第八军团兵力的估计大相径庭，有些人推测他们的兵力略高于90000，其他人则推测他们的兵力接近120000。我们已知在大十远征的后期，第八军团继续从被征服的世界招募新兵，某些情况下他们会偷走整个恒星系的年轻人，作为筛选合适应征者的基础。我们也知道午夜领主军团会广泛使用快速精神增强（机仆：大概就是直接灌输战斗知识、催眠训练之类的）和加速的基因种子植入手术（来制造星际战士），这进一步支持了某些说法：午夜领主的兵力至少与很多人数更多的军团兵力相当。也可能很多午夜领主的部队并未参与伊斯特万战役，而是在银河未被征服的角落中进行着自己选择的其他作战行动。