Two Unknown Legions

[The emperors chosen]

The simple explanation is that the two missing legions are whatever you want them to be.

 

GW have often said they left two legions empty for the players to create their own fluff. Would you prefer GW filled in the gaps, or left it to the players imagination (as people are doing in this thread) ?

The problem is that now, most people consider it lazy to use this, unless you are really good at writing fluff. While I have seen good examples of this, I have also seen not-so-good examples of this. I really wish GW would at least give us a small hint though. And as to Horus smashing the pod, remember, it could have been a vision, or he might have actually gone back in time.

[Nightshade1994]

I think that it would be great to at least find out who they are. Maybe not know what they did or where they are now. But at least the set up. People could use their imaginations again to come up with <hopefully> good fluff for new chapters and/or legions.

[Pulse]

I would personally assume that from the Lighting Stone - the legions being absent - smacks of something that could be more sinister/dangerous and out of knowledge of everyone save the Emperor.

 

There are just so many possibilities as to what could have happened; the legions are operating outside of the galaxy for example like huge expeditionary force bringing back information and knowledge outside the 'sphere of influence', could easily report back to the Emperor directly.

 

The list is endless.

[Karrious]

They cant have been sent off to fulfill some great mission for the emperor. If this had been the case their statues would still be standing, also if they had stayed true but been slain their states would again still be standing. So they must have done something really bad to have had the statues removed and all records of their legion's deeds destroyed.

[Walter Payton]

It could have been a secret mission.....

[Karrious]

It could have been a secret mission.....

 

 

So why remove their statues?

[Dark Apostle Thirst]

Just to throw in my favorite theory...

 

They simply got lost in the Great Crusade. Well, one did. Anyways, It got lost, searching for worlds to reclaim for the Imperium, when for whatever reason, all contact with the Imperium got shut off, and all the maps were destroyed. The astropaths and the Navigators died, and no matter how hard they searched, the Imperium could not be found.

 

I like to think what killed the psykers was the Istvaan 3 massacres, where Horus dropped virus bombs on a planet and killed everybody very quickly, and somewhere out there an old psyker sighed, his apprentice asked what was wrong, he said Iit was like a million voices cried out, and were silenced". The smuggler snorted at the old mans pseudo religon and told his hairy ogryn to not beat up the R2 type servitor.

[Severus6]

I always got the feeling that the two missing Legions were part of some great failure,....a failed invasion, a failed passage through the warp, or a possibly the failure of their geneseed. Any one of those would explain their expungement for no other reason than, no one likes to be reminded of failure. Especilally the Emperor, his Primarchs and their Astartes,...it would be too much to deal with on a morale level. Even for a group that knows no fear, an inglorious death would be beyond horror.

 

Severus6

[Grey Wolfe]

I always got the feeling that the two missing Legions were part of some great failure,....a failed invasion, a failed passage through the warp, or a possibly the failure of their geneseed. Any one of those would explain their expungement for no other reason than, no one likes to be reminded of failure. Especilally the Emperor, his Primarchs and their Astartes,...it would be too much to deal with on a morale level. Even for a group that knows no fear, an inglorious death would be beyond horror.

 

Severus6

 

I always thought that one of the "missing" primearchs was in fact the Alpha Legion twin, and the other was killed by Horus in his vision quest.

 

If not the other idea I liked was that maybe they were transported not somewhere but "somewhen" as the warp doesnt recognised time as we do (which may correlate the statement "they are out of our reach now", maybe ended up 10k in the future.....

 

Another point could be that the Primearch refused the Emperors vision and refused to join him, and maybe took a walk in the webway.

 

Many possibilities, but one fact, they will not turn up now.

[Korraz]

Alpharius Omegon is one primarch, so that can't be :) And since we know that they were found, united with their legions and fought for the emperor for some time, something must have happened after the emperor found them. IMO the tragedy happend before or very close to the time hat AO was found. Most of the primarchs, if not all, knew them and so did the Marines. A pity that the only guys that know them are the emperor, Bjorn and Abbadon and neither of them will ever talk of them. But at least it seems that they did not became traitors and the first chaosmarines, because they never showed up in the heresy and Horus or Abbadon never talked of them. Something like "The false emperor destroyed our rightous brothers. They were the prophets, they realised first that this emperor must be crushed!"

[Cornelias]

maybe the 2 legions went to war with each other for some reason during the great crusade (nothing related to chaos) and wiped or almost wiped each other out.

[Ghaust Mortium]

See, how I see it is, when the loyalists muse about aid from the two legions, and someone responds they are lost from us, I take that to mean that they may have gotten lost in the warp and just totally lost to the imperium, sort of Legion of the Damned esque and the primarch wondering about thier aid is jsut musing about what if they come back? Who will they side with? and the Other one rebukes by essentially saying "Nonsense, they are forever lost, no reason to trifle with such thoughts" Just my two cents. Sorry if this offends someone in some way

[Dark Apostle Thirst]

See, how I see it is, when the loyalists muse about aid from the two legions, and someone responds they are lost from us, I take that to mean that they may have gotten lost in the warp and just totally lost to the imperium, sort of Legion of the Damned esque and the primarch wondering about thier aid is jsut musing about what if they come back? Who will they side with? and the Other one rebukes by essentially saying "Nonsense, they are forever lost, no reason to trifle with such thoughts" Just my two cents. Sorry if this offends someone in some way

Nope, that is basically my theory right there, but instead of getting lost in the warp, they simply become lost, byond the Imperium.

[Capt. Lysander]

The problem is, every time someone tries to fill this gap and create his own legion, it tends to become a horrible, horrible fluffabomination and ends in a Mary-Sue-Legion, which makes the tendencies of the Smurfs look like dead serious and realistic writing. And most people don't even WANT to try and use this possibility, thank god. You can create an [Origin Unknown] chapter without that Legions and it is perfectly okay. But creating a whole Legion and throw it into the fluff, even if it's only the microcosmos of your playgroup, is just, well...The Chaosplayer could say "Okay, the Chaosprimarchs are tired of sitting around, now they go and beat the empire! Try and stop them!", next to the Tyranidschap who states: "Nuff with that toying around, now a REAL hive-fleet is coming!" which makes the Necronnerd go "Have fun, fleshlings, but the Dragon goes asskicking and awakens ALL crypts over the whole galaxy" and so on. A Legion is a fluff-nuke! If one of my pals would come along with a own Legion, I would just laugh at him. It tears down the fluff, and that's one of the things that connect all warhammer-players all over the world!

 

Well, I think the fun of WH40k fluff, is the fact that you can create your own legions/chapters, with the fluff being very open.

[gil galed]

i'd just like to point out that:

 

1/ they can't have gone mutinous because in HH they all laugh about the impossibility of marine killing marine

2/ As they were all found and took part in the GC its silly to say they didn't :P

 

Personally I think it's most likely they were flawed in some way, my favourite is the interpretation in Rise of the Tau in which they are both 'null' whose DNA has been tampered with by the C'Tan. Either way though something wrong with them seems most likely, especially given they cannot be traitors per say and neither do i think they would be expunged for losing. I don't think that would go down very well.

 

Also Dorn saying 'if only we had them' suggests that they are reachable in some way, not destroyed, 'lost to us' suggests retrievable but not useable

[Frijj]

The primarchs landed on human controlled planets due to the whole scattering of the primarchs being a set up for the heresy.

The emperor was the chaos gods enemy, and they wanted him out the way. They got their wish, well in part.

The only logical reason for the primarchs being scattered and landing on human worlds is that it was chaos that did it.

 

I do believe that one of the primarchs has been killed even before the crusade began, when horus went back in time during his time traveling

with the chaos entity in the HH books. I say time travelling due to the fact they showed him the future he created to get him to create it.

The reason he apeared in the emperors palace in the cryo room with the other primarchs is that as he was traveling through time he got lost along the way.

The chaos gods didn't intend for him to see that. Think about it. He saw the emperor and the emperor saw him. When the emperor finds him the emperor recognises him and looks into what is happening. which just speeds up his plans. It was an accident.

 

Just my opinion on the matter. I could be wrong. but what fits the twisted mind of tzeentch than to get someone the future they create by turning to get them to turn.

[Walter Payton]

I always thought that the whole thing was a vision

[Korraz]

It's another one of those "believe what you like"-Things

[Commander Sasha]

With the Lighting Tower quote, it can now be confirmed that BL doesn't think there are any female astartes? 'two absent brothers'

Alpharius Omegon was two twins, but is referred as one primarch, so I think it is still possible for at least one female primarch!

Oh, and the other one was really short, and landed on a planet of Squats, hence the expunging!

[Brand]

It's important to narrow down the facts of the fluff and as far as I can tell there are three distinct facts. 1- All 20 were found. 2- They (all 20) participated in the great crusade, at some point. 3- They were totally expunged from imperial records. So really in simple terms the only question to answer is why they were expunged instead of just being listed as Destroyed, traitors, ect...

 

As most 40K players know creating your own legion with a primarch is a DIY no no! Heck creating a successor using space wolf gene seed is so severely frowned on that it's almost a crime. I'm sure GW staff reads forums such as these and know these DIY rules that are infused in the 40K community. So the two missing primarch are definitely not expunged for DIY reasons. Perhaps the H.H. novels will one day shed more light on this subject, which I hope they do.

 

My personal theory on the two missing primarchs, remembering that the imperium is the most bloody regime ever, probably makes Hitler look like a boy scout, is that the two primarch became so powerful or were so similar to the big E in power that they were a threat and doing what any good dictator in history does to threats, he eliminated them. Making Horus the warmaster in no way contradicts that as it could have been a ploy because the big E knew none of his other children were powerful enough to take him on. He had to have known that jalousies would arise, just like in the HH novels. Those rivalries would ensure that none of the primarch would be able to muster enough power to ever take on the big E. However what the big E didn't count on with Horus was that he would become a Daemon Prince, or so infused with the power of chaos that Horus could pose a threat.

 

Just my 2 cents worth, which being said it's probably not even worth 2 cents. Well, maybe in today’s economy.

[Jarl Kjaran Coldheart]

i just remember the threat the emperor made to magnus at the council of nikea, and it all makes sense.

 

for those that havent read Collected Visions, he states that if magnus continues his sorcerous practices he'll visition destruction upon him and striek the Thousand Sons from all Imperial records.

 

so i wonder what the 2 primarchs did to screw up so totally bad.

 

WLK

[Piousservant]

"The second and eleventh plinths had been vacant for a long time. No one ever spoke of those two absent brothers. Their separate tragedies had seemed like aberrations. Had they, in fact, been warnings that no one had heeded?"

 

GW certainly does like to tease.... But we do love 'em for it. There is so little information that really the stuff in Lightning Tower and the other few references don't really add anything to our understanding of what happened to the two Legions - it just makes it more mysterious. Which is good, in a kind of fustrating "I want to know more!" way... :nuke:

 

And the problem is, what we do know is subjective. The quote above if from Dorn's musings, so how much can we read into his opinions? "Absent" does suggest they could return, but not necessarily, it could just be a an oblique way of saying they were killed. The fact he says seperate tragedies (that word in itself is interesting - if they had turned traitor would someone like Dorn call it a "tragedy"?) is probably the only concrete thing we've found out, as I think that rules out the two Legions going to war with each other.

 

The fact the statues were removed and all references expunged doesn't necessarily mean that what they did was "worse" than Horus - I'm not sure you could get much worse - I think has more to do with the timing (the fact that their removal was "unprecedented") and the scale (the Horus Heresy was a leeetle too big to pretend it hadn't happened).

 

A few thoughts - some kind of genetic problem or warp-induced mutation might have been devestating enough for the Legion to be expunged. The potential certainly exists, you only have to look at what Corax did with the Raven Guard, or at the Wulfen to see the potential for something very nasty within Astartes geneseed... The impact on morale (not just Astartes but everyone else) and the reputation of the Emperor and the Astartes, if it became known that some kind of uncontrollable mutation had reduced an Astartes Legion to crazed or slobbering wreaks would be the sort of thing that would have to be avoided.

 

If one of the Lost Two had turned traitor, you'd think the Horus Heresy wouldn't be as "unthinkable" as it had been. But, of course, that depends on what happened and who knew. The Primarchs know (well we can assume that from the fact Dorn knows) but that doesn't mean their Legions do. It may be that the Legio Custodes was sufficient to take on and destroy a single Legion at that time in the Great Crusade, in which case the Astartes wouldn't have been involved. If that were possible I imagine that would have been far more preferable for the Emperor than involving the Astartes in destroying a renegade Legion - even if he did inform the other Primarchs of what had happened.

[Dosjetka]

I read that too...it really does make you wonder...may genetic manipulation that screwed up very badly and created mutants?

 

BBL

[Gillyfish]

It's certainly possible. Don't forget that it's not just the Primarchs who have vanished but their Legions too. So whatever happened to the Primarchs must have cast some doubt on the marines created with their genestock (and this would have had to have happened even if the Primarchs were not found). There has to be some reason why the marines disappeared as well as their Primarchs.

 

Genetic instability, mutation and insanity are all possible explanations that could have occurred regardless of the status of the Primarchs.

 

As marines have not fought marines before, this either means the lost Legions gave themselves up willingly (maybe appalled at their curse?) or they were subdued by the Custodes, Sisters of Silence or the Imperial Army.

[chenley]

Mortarion could turn invisible, he does it in flight of the esienstein

 

I don't recall mortarion turning invisible.