The Lost Primarchs

[Cerelius]

In later books II and XI are referred to as the 'lost and forgotten'. I think it is fairly clear that one legion was purged and the other was never reunited with its Primarch and was assimilated into the Smurfs. But that is just my take on it. And nice video, thanks for sharing that.

 

They could not have been assimilated into the Ultramarines as this would then mean that you would have two different genseeds within a legion that is supposed to be pure. This would therefore mean that with the correct equipment you could single out Ultras genetics and the "Others" genetics.

 

So the conjecture that the Ultramarines are made up of two legions is RUBBISH.

 

Enough Said.

[Haranin]

The existing marines could have been absorbed into the ultras, and the geneseed for those marines not used.

 

Just because right now no one can see that Ultramarine geneseed doesn't contain more then one type, doesn't mean that during the crusade/HH the smurfs hadn't absorbed the missing legions.

 

--

 

Based on Dorn's comments in one of the short stories, I think the missing legions are more likely destroyed then absorbed. Of course ADB hints at it...

[Lord_Caerolion]

Actually, no he doesn't. Two Word Bearers gossip about it, about the Legion that shamed and humiliated them. He's also stated numerous times that it isn't intended to be taken as truth, but simply malicious rumour.

[Unintentional Batman]

He's also stated numerous times that it isn't intended to be taken as truth, but simply malicious rumour.

 

But as it was put on paper, the writer's opinion is not more relevant than the opinion of the reader. Author has no authority over a published work. We as readers are well within our freedoms to take that comment as canon.

 

Postmodernism FTW :)

[Raven Angel]

Perhaps but to ignore the writers intention is to read you own prejudices and preconceived notions into it. You can twist some one else expression of an idea to make your own wants true. it doesn't work that way and it doesn't make you right either.

[jeremy1391]

My belief. UM's Killed the primarch of one and absorbed his legion

Second was taken out by the space wolves, which has been pretty much confirmed.

[Chaplain ChonkE]

He's also stated numerous times that it isn't intended to be taken as truth, but simply malicious rumour.

 

But as it was put on paper, the writer's opinion is not more relevant than the opinion of the reader. Author has no authority over a published work. We as readers are well within our freedoms to take that comment as canon.

 

Postmodernism FTW :D

 

 

The English teacher side of me got a big ol' grin while my face rests in the palms of my hands.

[Apothecary Vaddon]

Surrealism is worse.

[Conn Eremon]

Perhaps but to ignore the writers intention is to read you own prejudices and preconceived notions into it. You can twist some one else expression of an idea to make your own wants true. it doesn't work that way and it doesn't make you right either.

 

 

The guy does have a point, though. Whatever the author's original intention in writing that passage, having that passage in the finished product means that there truly is a possibility of it in canon. For most people, the author's opinion is the final say on the matter. For myself, if AD-B says that he meant it to mean something other than what I had interpreted it to be, then I will assume that I was wrong. I'll admit that I took the rumor as more factual than he had apparently intended, but I have since adjusted my thinking on the matter. But that is how I would look at it, and how I think the majority will look at it. But that doesn't mean it's the only way to look at it, or that there is a right or wrong way to look at it. Especially in this IP of all IPs, with its, as AD-B has put it once or twice, 'loose canon.'

[Unintentional Batman]

Perhaps but to ignore the writers intention is to read you own prejudices and preconceived notions into it. You can twist some one else expression of an idea to make your own wants true. it doesn't work that way and it doesn't make you right either.

 

Author is God. That's a completely valid way of seeing things. But then again, so is the way that the Word is God - what is written is written and what we take from that is our own interptations. It's not really about "twisting" anything as you suggest, it's just that if you hold authorial intent in greater value than the interptability of the work. What we get from a work is much more important than what the creator intended in my view of art*

 

Sure, it would be downright ludcirous to try to argue ADB about what HE MEANT - that ain't cool. But as far as things like this passage about rumour of assimilation - we got it written, now it is there in the literary universe. Wrong or right? That's not yet stated clearly inside the universe. I think Cormac Airt said it well "possibility of it in canon".

 

I personally feel stuff like this should be left completely ambiguous. ADB dropped the line into the book so it's there, but I don't really want to see anyone to come in and confirm it. Planting seeds. Making people come up with their own theories. That's the beauty of stories. Is it a rumour? Is it truth?

 

About authorial intent, I think ADB has mentioned regret of ever putting the piece of dialogue into the book as it opened a can of worms he didn't mean to open (sorry if I am misparaphrasing older posts, I'm writing from the memory here). That's something I can appreciate. But once it's written, it can never be unwritten.

 

Well, unless someone comes and actively retcons it away :cuss

 

The English teacher side of me got a big ol' grin while my face rests in the palms of my hands.

 

Hehe :lol:

 

*oh, my most profound apologies to everyone for using the word "art" in context of 40K gaming fiction :cuss

[Azarias]

He's also stated numerous times that it isn't intended to be taken as truth, but simply malicious rumour.

 

But as it was put on paper, the writer's opinion is not more relevant than the opinion of the reader. Author has no authority over a published work. We as readers are well within our freedoms to take that comment as canon.

 

Postmodernism FTW :D

 

Yes, it's fair to say that the author's control over his or her work's exegesis is fairly limited. One is reminded of that apocryphal story about Moby Dick, where a reader went up to Melville and asked if the book was a Christian allegory. Melville, the snarky git, said something along the lines of "Huh, I hadn't thought about it that way, but it works." So, yes, you're right. We can't read the author's intentions as the only way to read any work. But at the same time, their thoughts on their work can be useful. Nabokov's afterword to Lolita leads the reader to understand the work as akin to an ape, who upon being taught how to draw, sketched the bars of his own cage - a image that perfectly summarizes the novel's unreliable narrator.

 

So the author's word is never the last word. But it can be useful as evidence in your own argument. So when ADB says that he included that segment as bitter-tongued rumormongering, or angry words spoken by a humiliated Astartes - and, more importantly, that the context of the quotation supports this claim - I'm inclined to accept his explanation as my reading. Especially since there's absolutely no evidence anywhere else in the entire HH series that this is the truth. It can be asserted, sure, but I can disregard it as a poor argument because it has not a shred of evidence in favor of its veracity.

 

So, to summarize: yes, you're right in your application, but you should remember that just because we readers have an equal amount of freedom when it comes to reading a work does not mean that every argument is equally valid.

 

Also, I realized halfway through this that you probably meant this in jest, but I was committed by then. No hard feelings, I hope.

[Qarassen]

i see all your points, but you have to see it as such:

 

If there primarch fell for some reason, the majority of the legion will follow as well. An example is Luna wolfs/sons of horus/black legion.

 

The difference between Horus legion and the other two is that The Emperor had time to deal whit the two legions, and he was not engaged with the webway, if he were it did not require his full attention.

[Conn Eremon]

Azariah's points are all very true, or at the very least reflect my own conclusions on this specific matter and over-all approach to an author's input.

 

However, I feel that it does need to be pointed out that for this kind of IP, with multiple contributing people, the author's input has less impact. For that one book, sure. Or any book written by him specifically, yes. But now that it's part of the greater collective IP, it is no longer his to control, at least not entirely. Any other book he writes may very well take his thoughts on the matter as the guiding principle. He can continue to write books with that one detail being nothing more than an off-hand rumor. But there his control ends, because he is not the only contributor to this series. While it's rather likely, I think, that most, if not all, authors will follow his lead on this matter, it doesn't necessarily mean that they will, or must. Now that it is out there, we have the possibility of, at any point, someone utilizing it as more than just a rumor. At any point, we have the possibility of an author writing a Horus Heresy short story of a Marine trying to cope in a Legion that is not his own. Or of an Ultramarine Sergeant with a predisposed bias against a Marine under his command for his different gene-seed. Or any number of countless possibilities in which what is now rumor is made fact.

 

It doesn't mean that it should be treated as fact already. It has always been possible, technically. At any point, someone could have made that fact even before AD-B wrote it as a rumor. Just like at any point someone could write about how the Ultramarines painted their companies in only two colors: Blue and Hot Pink. But now that it has been written, even if just as a rumor, and added to the collective, we become aware of the possibility of it, no matter how remote.

 

Again, I should clarify that my own stance on the matter is that AD-B's input on the matter is utterly conclusive. It's not true, just a bit of rumor-mongering. But I have to accept that the possibility of it being truth rather than rumor is there, now that we have been made aware of it. Just, in my thinking, an exceptionally remote possibility.

[Spinsanity]

Since there's been somewhat heated debate recently over the fate of one of the missing legions and their possibly being absorbed by the UMs, I figured I'd point one thing out just to poke some fun at the fluff...

 

Take a look at the list of Ultramarines second founding chapters.

 

They all fall within one of two groups : extremely adherant to the codex (Genesis, Black and White consuls, etc) or are obsessed with death (Mortifactors, Doom Eagles, possibly Silver Skulls?)

 

I just find the parallel (and the possibilities this brings) intriguing :)

[awfulawful]

i LOVE that tyranid theory. great idea...the Emperor somehow knew about the tyranid threat and the scope of it well before the rest of the galaxy(because of the information being suppressed, probably), so he sends two entire legions on a crusade to try to wipe them out. there wouldn't be a home planet though, that doesn't fit with their fluff. the whole reason they move around is because they're constantly using up the resources of the worlds they're on...what they'd have instead would probably be some central fleet that contains the original hive mind thats remotely controlling all the other hive fleets. that's what they'd try to find and destroy.

 

This. Here's how it obviously went down:

The Hive Fleet incursions in M41 were not actually the first appearance of the Tyranids. They had actually attacked before, making it all the way to Terra. The Emperor's forces were able to defeat that fleet, though the threat of future attacks was quite evident. Upon founding the Legions, the Emperor immediately dispatched on of them to the Tyranids home planet, knowing that the journey would take thousands of years. In the meantime, he set about searching for the Primarch of that Legion. The Emperor could sense that the Primarch was close, actually living on Terra (called Earth at the time), and implemented a system of monitoring all children to find him. Likely candidates were then sent to an orbital facility for further screening. Eventually the Primarch Andrew "Ender" Wiggin was found and successfully commanded his Legion in the destruction of the Tyranid home world.

[Orlunu]

This is how I like to think of it...

Everyone knows how completely devoid of Love the 41st is, so the Emperor sent the two legions on a crusade against heartlessness. Now, we all know that the only suitable lover for a Primarch is another Primarch, so... yeah. And just when everything was getting steamy, the Emperor walked into the room.

:P

^This^

Is the only reason that I have read that I think would lead to erasure rather than the "turned to chaos, very publicly torn into little bits as a warning". Sent against the tyranids, why? "Hey, Primarch X to Big Daddy E, we have arrived at the tyranid's home planet. Looks like some type of giant space locusts have stripped it down to a ball of rock already." However, incest in what is basically the royal family would get swept under the rug.

Emperor tells them to go to opposite ends of the galaxy, they say they can't leave each other. Big E throws a strop and tells them to get out of his Imperium and they storm of with 20,000 Astartes. Malcador says that they are "forever lost to us" because neither they nor the Emperor have backed down over the last however many years and refuse to cooperate.

And the "separate fates" quote is because when people are trying to cover something up, they don't always tell the truth.

 

To conjecture even further, part of one of the legions may have been left behind and absorbed by UM because when this happened, their primarch was on a R&R break with the other legion, and OFC didn't take all of his/her marines along. Their successors became emo because of their "failure" to side with their primarch. A lot of conjecture on almost no evidence.

 

As I have decided that this is true, I now want to smack far fewer smurfs. :D Always far preferred the Deathy ones, but whilst I believed them to be Guilliman's... well an Alpha has principles.

[Ohrtanc]

Just looking on Deviantart for some good Blood Angel pics and stumbling over this here:

 

http://noldofinve.deviantart.com/art/The-E...43169&qo=47

 

I like his story he wrote under the picture, a Legion looking to prevent there losses (and finding Chaos I guess.)

 

Edith says: Found a pic of the II Legions Primarch: http://noldofinve.deviantart.com/art/The-S...43169&qo=53