Rick Priestley on the Missing Legions

[Durfast Spiritwolf]

It’s odd in the sense that The Space Wolves pretty much beat the Thousand Sons for their sorcerous ways… yet this wasn’t enough to purge the Legion from the records — so what the warp could have happened to the other two Legions to actually have them expunged from all records? And have Primarchs not even talk about them?

 

As has been mentioned, the Thousand Sons haven't been deleted because the purge wasn't successful. Whatever the missing Legions did, it was bad, and every member of those Legions was killed, without question. The Thousand Sons still exist in records because they're still out there, as with the other Traitor Legions. If Russ had managed to destroy all the Thousand Sons, they would have been deleted.

 

Every member killed, without question?

 

 

First Heretic suggests otherwise...

 

[Midwest]

And ADB has repeatedly suggested that's an in-universe rumor not meant to be taken as gospel truth.

[Valkyrion]

The missing legions didn't necessarily have to have done anything wrong.

There are lots of biased points of view and rumour-mongering going on within the HH series - The Space Wolves destroyed them, the Ultramarines absorbed them or whatever, but when Dorn, the most stoic and loyal primarch, laments the two missing legions when conversing with Malcador in Mechanicum I can't imagine that he'd mourn their loss if they were mutated heretics bent on killing everything.

 

That said, Magnus and Lorgar do comment negatively on at least one missing primarch hoping that the same fate doesn't befall either of them.

 

So, maybe one was bad, one was reassigned.

 

My main beef isn't so much the 'it's secret and we can't talk about it' that goes on between the primarchs when talking to each other - they all clearly know what happened - it's that not one single joe marine has mentioned it at all. We have Terrans in the Legions, original Space Marines, who fought in the Great Crusade at the start and are still there at the end that must have fought alongside one of the missing legions as all 20 were present and correct. Not even a hint, an honour marking, a hushed conversation, a strange emblem...nothing.

How?

 

A further point, sorry - if the missing legions had gone bad then it is right to delete them because the 18 were on a Great Crusade, uniting lost worlds of humanity. They couldn't turn up and say 'well, there were two more of us but they went bad and we had to nuke them, come join our big happy family'. The pretence of a united front was vital.

Now it doesn't matter - all/most human occupied worlds are already in the imperium and taught what the imperium teaches. It doesn't matter that there are bad space marines anymore, because violence is everywhere anyway. There's no point denying a bad human anymore than saying an ork doesn't exist. Neither exists until it's encountered and many people won't encounter either.

[Lord_Caerolion]

And ADB has repeatedly suggested that's an in-universe rumor not meant to be taken as gospel truth.

 

Hell, he's not only stated that, he's stated that if he knew people would take it as anything other than rumour, he wouldn't have included it.

 

Simply put, the two missing Legions are gone. Utterly, utterly gone, and any rumours of them being absorbed into the Ultramarines are just that. Nothing but vicious rumours from two humiliated Astartes, directed at their greatest rivals.

[Veteran Sergeant]

This topic is nothing new. Priestley's explanation of the intention of the missing legions is way older than that interview. But 40K lore is always changing. The "expunged" legions were originally supposed to have been erased to erase their shame. But the lore of the Horus Heresy from back in the early nineties when the Horus Heresy lore was first being expanded was limited, with the missing details having been "lost".

 

The problem is, now the Horus Heresy is being explored in exhaustive (and exhausting at times) detail. If you keep the original idea of the expunged Legions, all of a sudden they have to actually be described, since they would be contemporary to the setting. Retconning isn't anything new to the 40K universe. So, the original idea is conveniently forgotten (and it was never really featured in any of the old rulebooks anyway), the missing legions become purged before the Heresy, and life goes on. I imagine A-D-B can shed some light on it assuming it's not part of some NDA, but I am willing to bet the Heresy authors are given instructions that they can mention the missing legions, but always evasively and without detail. And I imagine most of them decide to toss in little tidbits like the lines in First Heretic where one of the characters suggests the Ultramarines absorbed one of the legions or the implication (from Prospero Burns, iirc?) that the Space Wolves had fought against another legion before just to stir things up and create more amusing threads like this on 40K forums. ;) I'm also willing to bet that there isn't any actual fluff behind the missing Legions aside from some basic framework (they did bad and everybody was sworn not to talk about it). Or maybe that's just my personal hope, because the two missing legions is one of the oldest bits of surviving fluff and it would be a shame to reveal them and kill that little bit of intriguing 40K mystery. Not to mention the crop of "My survivors of the missing legions with absurd and stupid background fluff" armies that would grow out of it.

[dcye]

Not to mention the crop of "My survivors of the missing legions with absurd and stupid background fluff" armies that would grow out of it.

 

:/ wouldn't that get rid of this problem? I've encountered so many idiotic armies like this in my time, revealing the legions and their nature would surely eliminate these problems?

[Veteran Sergeant]

Yeah, but people's unique snowflake home brew First Founding chapters are one thing. Imagine that Games Workshop reveals the 11th Legion was called the Spiffy Dragons but was completely annihilated and their Primarch Tophat Aligatorboots was executed for being both corrupted by Chaos and a better dresser than the Emperor.

 

There would be dozens of modern "My guys are long lost Spiffy Dragons who were out beyond the Galactic Fringe who returned home and were forgiven by the Emperor" or "My guys were made because one day, after the Adeptus Terra Emperormas party, a bunch of drunk High Lords unsealed the Spiffy Dragons gene seed and founded the Storm Dandies". Not really a new problem I guess, just a different one. Really, I'd just be more disappointed that one of the last cool pieces of 20+ year old fluff was being retconned for convenience's sake.

[Sviox]

The missing legions didn't necessarily have to have done anything wrong.

There are lots of biased points of view and rumour-mongering going on within the HH series - The Space Wolves destroyed them, the Ultramarines absorbed them or whatever, but when Dorn, the most stoic and loyal primarch, laments the two missing legions when conversing with Malcador in Mechanicum I can't imagine that he'd mourn their loss if they were mutated heretics bent on killing everything.

 

That said, Magnus and Lorgar do comment negatively on at least one missing primarch hoping that the same fate doesn't befall either of them.

 

So, maybe one was bad, one was reassigned.

 

My main beef isn't so much the 'it's secret and we can't talk about it' that goes on between the primarchs when talking to each other - they all clearly know what happened - it's that not one single joe marine has mentioned it at all. We have Terrans in the Legions, original Space Marines, who fought in the Great Crusade at the start and are still there at the end that must have fought alongside one of the missing legions as all 20 were present and correct. Not even a hint, an honour marking, a hushed conversation, a strange emblem...nothing.

How?

 

A further point, sorry - if the missing legions had gone bad then it is right to delete them because the 18 were on a Great Crusade, uniting lost worlds of humanity. They couldn't turn up and say 'well, there were two more of us but they went bad and we had to nuke them, come join our big happy family'. The pretence of a united front was vital.

Now it doesn't matter - all/most human occupied worlds are already in the imperium and taught what the imperium teaches. It doesn't matter that there are bad space marines anymore, because violence is everywhere anyway. There's no point denying a bad human anymore than saying an ork doesn't exist. Neither exists until it's encountered and many people won't encounter either.

 

Very close to how I imagine this.

 

Basically, here are all the hints we have been told:

-Two separate tragedies

-Still regarded as brothers, not really as traitors or anything like that

-Forbidden to be even spoken of

-One or both might have been absorbed to Ultramarines

-Space wolves might have been used to 'execute' some elements of one or both legions

 

This leaves many possible solutions, but I'm kind of convinced that most of the other one (including the Primarch) were destroyed in combat (or otherwise, maybe lost in warp) and the survivors absorbed into Ultramarines, plus all records cleaned to cover up the failure to keep up the image that the Astartes cannot fail. For the other legion, it's even more guessing, but maybe the Primarch's ideology was against that of the Imperium/Empreror (maybe he made friends with the xenos instead of destroying them?) and in the end the Emperor made the decision that even though "Bob" was a good friend, he had crossed some boundaries and ordered the Space Wolves to destroy them, again forbidding anyone to speak of that legion because of the shame involved...

[Midwest]

I don't see how GW not having an 'official' secret story for them means we can't speculate for fun...?

[Grey Mage]

Sometimes its failure, not crime, that leads to an honorable death and purge.

 

What if you, as a primarch, couldnt be derived into a stable gene-seed? You have no legion, and you never will. The Emperor reassigns you, hides you, and purges the records to avoid embarrassment.

 

You die, having failed a coup on your planet. The Emperor cannot revive his fallen son... and so rather than have a story of failure for his demigods he simply leaves it at "they are gone, and gone forever, weep for your brother" and destroys the data on their fates.

 

You refuse to swear fealty for the emperor. You declare that youd rather die than follow him, as you believe in the power of democracy, or anarchy, or some other political notion that doesnt work in the imperium- and he cannot sway you with all his power. He leaves you to think/rot on your backwater world and sends your legion off into the the edges of the galaxy on a suicide mission.

 

etc etc etc.

[Crimson Hawk]

Magnus the Red Drove Terra insane and he wasn't erased from history. Fulgrim killed Ferrus Manus in cold blood.

Horus killed Sanguinus. Peturabo slaughtered his homeworld ect ect. All of these acts deserve erase-ification, but none of them were. Plus, in Prospero Burns and the Outcast Dead, it is suggested that Russ destroyed at least one of them (the lost legions) before he attacked Magnus

[Veteran Sergeant]

Magnus the Red Drove Terra insane and he wasn't erased from history. Fulgrim killed Ferrus Manus in cold blood.

Horus killed Sanguinus. Peturabo slaughtered his homeworld ect ect. All of these acts deserve erase-ification, but none of them were. Plus, in Prospero Burns and the Outcast Dead, it is suggested that Russ destroyed at least one of them (the lost legions) before he attacked Magnus

The Horus Heresy was not an event that could simply be erased or expunged. It suggests that whatever happened to the two lost legions came at a time and in a situation where their existences could be suppressed and erased. One atrocity in a war can be erased. An entire war can't.

[Doghouse]

Not to mention the crop of "My survivors of the missing legions with absurd and stupid background fluff" armies that would grow out of it.

 

:/ wouldn't that get rid of this problem? I've encountered so many idiotic armies like this in my time, revealing the legions and their nature would surely eliminate these problems?

 

I think that they should be left unnamed so that people can create their own first founding Legion to be honest as was originally implied when the whole thing sprung up in the first place. Pre-Heresy has become an obsession for details that are not set in stone and are open to interpretation of the reader, a little room for people to play around with the material to create armies is a good thing.

 

Having said that I'd love to know what happened to them but the speculation of something that may or may not even have a solid answer in the minds of the writers keeps people focused on the Great Crusade Era. To reveal the truth would diminish the mythology of the universe of the time in my opinion.

[Lord_Caerolion]

Magnus the Red Drove Terra insane and he wasn't erased from history. Fulgrim killed Ferrus Manus in cold blood.

Horus killed Sanguinus. Peturabo slaughtered his homeworld ect ect. All of these acts deserve erase-ification, but none of them were. Plus, in Prospero Burns and the Outcast Dead, it is suggested that Russ destroyed at least one of them (the lost legions) before he attacked Magnus

 

Again, it's because there are still some left! Why would you delete all information against a threat you'll still have to face? It's just stabbing yourself in the foot. Also, as has been said in this thread, the information actually has been deleted, for the most part. You've got to have some serious levels of influence to get information on the Traitor Legions, other than the "they're traitor Astartes" that sums up what most Imperial Guard commanders would know. The basic citizenry wouldn't even know that. What worlds know about the legions don't know that there were more. Hell, one planet apparently taught that there was a 7th and 9th Legion, but never an 8th (Space Wolves and Blood Angels, and the 8th were the Night Lords). Horus is, at best, known simply as the Arch-Traitor. Even the Inquisition would know far, far less than we do, and the vast majority of Inquisitors probably don't even know that.

 

Whatever happened to the missing Legions was bad, but they were all without doubt killed. The Traitor Legions, however, still exist, and the Imperium needs all the knowledge they have on them to fight them. How do you think the Imperium would cope if Cadia killed everyone that knew about the Traitor Astartes after each invasion, only to be incredibly surprised when the next invasion hits, and they have to start from scratch? To be fair, the Grey Knights and Ordo Malleus basically already do that, but only to expendible personnel, who don't need to know about the Traitors.

 

In other words, about half of what we know about the Traitor Legions, the Imperium has gotten deleted, forgotten, or wrong, and the other half is in a "need to know only" folder, marked with the most high-level Inquisitorial seals, with everyone else having to make do with incomplete/incorrect religious fables and allegory, folk-tales and half-heard rumours.

The Traitor Legions, for the most part, have been deleted.

[Brother Captain Kezef]

My search fu didn't turn this up, so my apologies if this has already been discussed, but tonight I listened to a rather long and interesting interview 40k Radio did with Rick Priestley last summer. The audio's bad, so I didn't quite catch all of it, but they asked him about the mystery legions, what the inspiration was, etc. The audio cut out at times, but besides the normal stuff about wanting it to always be a mystery, he states that the Marine legions were based on the Roman Legions and how some Roman legions were lost or erased from memory, and he seems to specifically suggest that the two missing legions did something Very Bad , but then subsequently were redeemed by the Emperor, but because the Very Bad Thing was so Very Bad, the Emperor's Mercy was to actually completely erase them from history so that future generations of humanity would never remember their crimes/failings/etc.

 

Not long later, he seems to contrast this with the Dark Angels, another legion that did a Very Bad Thing, but were allowed to continue on - the suggestion being that the civil war within the Dark Angels wasn't as bad as whatever the two missing legions were accused of, and thus even though the DA were allowed back into the fold ('forgiven', as it were :) ), it wasn't bad enough to warrant 'redeeming' them by striking them from the history books.

 

I thought the redeeming bit was a neat twist, tho' I don't know how relevant/'official' RP's apparent original intent is to the current concept of them.

 

The Emperor never found out about the Dark Angels.

 

That's the whole thing with the unforgiven, half their legion sided with Horus and they didn't find out till after the heresy was over and the Lion brought his men home.

[Iron Lord]

If you go by Fallen Angels, it had less to do with "siding with Horus" as "siding against Jonson".

[The Colossus]

Didn't Angron refuse to follow the emp, and was thus kidnapped as such? What if a primarch actually attacked the emp? Surely this would be pretty heinous, but not necessarily heretical, more misguided?

 

Also, what about attempting (further) genetic manipulation with their legions?

 

Or, failed/premature access to the webway?

 

Just me 2 pence... :)

[The Shadow Guard]

Seems an odd stance, the Traitor Legions did very bad things and yet aren't erased. Why erase a legion for redeeming themselves? Surely the redemption angle would be a good example for others to follow? :P

 

Hi Olisredan, don't forget that in the first instance of the two "erased legions" the Emperor had full control of his imperium and was likely in a position to "erase" them from human memory for whatever they did. In the case of the "Traitor legions of Horus, Malcador and Dorn on behalf of the emperor did try to "Erase" Horus' rebellion by sending an overwhelming force of seven legions to take on Horus' four at IStavvan. That Horus had turned four of the seven "loyalist" legions made it impossible to carry out the edict!

 

SG

[Grey Mage]

Didn't Angron refuse to follow the emp, and was thus kidnapped as such? What if a primarch actually attacked the emp? Surely this would be pretty heinous, but not necessarily heretical, more misguided?

 

Also, what about attempting (further) genetic manipulation with their legions?

 

Or, failed/premature access to the webway?

 

Just me 2 pence... :blush:

Well, Im less familiar with the others but Russ certainly tried. He got a power-fist to the face for his efforts to boot. I imagine it wasnt unknown for the E to be attacked at times.

[Lord_Caerolion]

Angron also tried, and if I remember correctly, killed one of the Custodes guarding the Emperor before he got teleported away to the War Hound fleet.

[Aegnor]

There are two answers in my view. First, my understanding is that the non-kayfabe explanation was from RT times when there was only 20 legions (ie no second founding) and the records were lost to give people the option of inventing a homebrew legion. There was no suggestion they'd done something wrong, just that the records were incomplete. That's boring, and non-kayfabe answers in fluff terms are boring, but it's worth stating to re-emphasize that anything that now exists is an evolution/ret-con/story built on pre-existing architecture.

 

In fluff terms, I go with the "it wasn't worse than the Heresy, but was able to be covered up" explanation. The Imperial Truth was being iterated, the future was still bright, the Emperor was alive and active. Two Legions and Primarchs rebelling (presumably one at a time and presumably being swiftly smashed) was possible to cover up before knowledge spread too far, and important to do so as it didn't gel with the "Emperor beloved by all", "manifest destiny to illuminate the galaxy" story the Great Crusade was based on.

 

I don't think what they did was worse than Horus - i mean, realistically, how could it be worse? It's just that they weren't organized enough / in the position Horus was to make their treachery too big to be forgotten. They couldn't erase the memory of the rebels during the Heresy when they were still fighting them. Afterwards, the place was too badly damaged for such a clean up of Imperial memory and records to be realistic. Plus, by then the narrative re the Emperor had changed. He was now a God-Emperor who sacrifice himself to save humanity.

 

I think it's quite likely at least one of the two missing primarches were corrupted by Chaos before the Emperor found them, quite possibly obviously visibly so. The Chaos gods seemed to have some say on where the Primarchs went - given how prevalent Chaos cults were after the Age of Strife and before the GC, wouldn't be surprising if a Primarch landed on a world controlled by Chaos, like Davin, old Cadia or the world "Legion" starts on. The Primarch is raised as a Chaos follower, is utterly corrupt. Emperor finds him, senses this, kills him. The legion in question was there and saw this, and is liquidated as they're not trustworthy afterwards.

 

Makes sense for Chaos to have been involved in the two missing legions - we know Chaos snatched them, and given the existence of Chaos was secret until the Heresy, would explain why the knowledge was supressed.

[Valtonis]

Think of Earth. How much of several thousand years of history do we know of one single planet? We have names and a few myths/stories/legends/accounts of countless historical figures, and little more than that. Now think of all the cultures that record next to nothing about (or simply have no contact with) ancient civilisations. Does someone living the wilds of South America or Africa know who Cyrus the Great was? Do they know the word Babylon? That ignorance applies to every culture in the world. There's an infinity of lore we just don't know, and a huge amount we piece together, surely getting a lot of it wrong.

 

In a few thousand years of civilised history, we can barely even imagine everything we don't know - and it's because we don't know the scale of it that we simply can't imagine what we're ignorant about.

 

Now apply that not to one world and 4,000-6,000 years, but to a million worlds and 10,000 years. Most of the Imperium won't even know or care that Horus existed. They won't know what a primarch is. Most will even probably consider the Adeptus Astartes to be a myth, if they've even heard of them at all. Think how many religions we have on one world that worship the basic concept of "one god". The Imperium will have that across its millions of worlds, all of them different just slightly in the observance of the Imperial Creed, so that many will barely even resemble one another.

 

That's the reality of 40K. The scope, the scale, the sheer span of the setting is absolutely breathtaking.

 

It's something a lot of people forget in topics like these. There are probably countless worlds that worship the Emperor as a Sun God, or the manifestation of the spirits of their ancestors, or an aspect of the souls of every machine, or simply the ethereal presence that makes the crops grow every year. The Golden Throne. The Space Marines. The Astronomican. The Traitor Legions. Daemons. Chaos. These are words and concepts that just don't exist to many, many Imperial citizens, and those that are aware of them won't know a fraction of what we do, as readers of the rulebooks.

 

So why there are NO legions based on the two greatest cultures (based on longevity and influence), Indian and Chinese?

and before some ignoramus posts, Mongolian is NOT Chinese

or even African? where humanity basically originates?

or Mayans etc etc

[Jimmy Carmine]

So why there are NO legions based on the two greatest cultures (based on longevity and influence), Indian and Chinese?

and before some ignoramus posts, Mongolian is NOT Chinese

or even African? where humanity basically originates?

or Mayans etc etc

 

Well I suppose because this fictional world was initially written by a bunch of guys in Nottingham who seemingly knew more about European Medieval History than either of these cultures.

[Crimson Hawk]

I still don't care what GW says, I still think one was lost for eternity in the warp, and the other turned to the C'tan. Not so ridiculous when you think about it. I have even named them, the ++DELETED BY ORDER OF THE INQUISITION++ led by Primarchs ++DELETED BY ORDER OF THE INQUISITION++ and ++DELETED BY ORDER OF THE INQUSITION++

[Hereticus81]

I think it's quite likely at least one of the two missing primarches were corrupted by Chaos before the Emperor found them, quite possibly obviously visibly so. The Chaos gods seemed to have some say on where the Primarchs went - given how prevalent Chaos cults were after the Age of Strife and before the GC, wouldn't be surprising if a Primarch landed on a world controlled by Chaos, like Davin, old Cadia or the world "Legion" starts on. The Primarch is raised as a Chaos follower, is utterly corrupt. Emperor finds him, senses this, kills him. The legion in question was there and saw this, and is liquidated as they're not trustworthy afterwards.

 

I thought this until in several Heresy books, or audiobooks, mentioned how both primarchs were united with their respective legions nad did something to cause them to be erased. In Dark King/Lightning Tower Dorn ruminates on their fall but with no specifics just a sense of loss and disappointment.

 

I'm very hungover right now so I can't think of the specific bit. once i shake this off I may actually remember it!