Astartes who "never knew" their lineage?

[Zuvassin]

Firstly, apologies if this has already been discussed (my search-fu is weak sometimes) and also that I don't have the books on hand to quote page and verse.

 

Secondly: TL;DR - how can Astartes during the HH not know what Legion they were from (or otherwise intended for)?

 

So, in the Horus Heresy black book for Blackshields (book six, IIRC), there's multiple mentions made to some Blackshields having never known their intended legion. That is, while many are Legionnaires turned mercenary or opportunistic, the book seems to indicate that at least some Blackshields were somehow never actual part of a Legion.

 

If so, what scenarios would lead to that? The two that directly came to mind:

 

• Illicit / makeshift gene-labs, likely run by the Traitor Legions to resupply their losses
• A continuation of Terran-born Astartes being mass raised and trained prior to being assigned a Legion (the situation described in the Scars novel IIRC)

 

I suppose some sort of raid or ambush by a Blackshields force could lead to them capturing Marines that never officially served in a Legion, but the more I thought on those scenarios, it still seems likely they would have known which Legion they were intended for or otherwise were derived from. AFAIK, Fabius Bile was still part of the Emperor's Children (however different or distant he was from them), and it seems unlikely the Blackshields seized Astartes raised on Terra/Luna, especially before they would have been assigned a Legion (and if that was even still a thing once the Legions had been relocated to their Primarchs' homeworlds).

 

I've considered a scenario where a Marine is basically mind-wiped and doesn't remember their legion of origin, but the wording in the background pieces seem to indicate they never knew to begin with, rather than being established Legion members that were subsequently the victims of some sort of mind-wipe or similar amnesia.

 

Does anyone know more about this? I've read a fair amount of the HH novels and short story collections, but not all, and I've not listened to many of the audio dramas - has this particular bit of lore been addressed or expanded anywhere?

[Qkhitai]

There's an interesting bit of fluff in HH3 which talks about the Alpha Legion and how there may have been multiple expeditionary fleets that had no contact with one another, each thinking that they were the only one; the actual Alpha Legion. You can turn that on its head: there may well have been Alpha Legionnaires who didn't even know they weren't Alpha Legionnaires. Some kind of crazy deep undercover operatives - that would be a cool scenario.

 

You could also work with the idea of the generic Astartes training facilities (a little like at the beginning of Scars); Space Marines who were trained up, but then sent on to the legion that needed them the most. Maybe one of these facilities was hit by a Xenos/rebel/traitor raid and the recruits were scattered before they could join their intended legion; or they were otherwise waylaid en route.  (edit: woops, you already mentioned that one)

 

I'm sure there would also be plenty of opportunities for some kind of 'rogue lineage' as the Emperor experimented with (proto-) Astartes during the Unification Wars; having test subjects that were never intended for a particular legion, but somehow survived and continued to operate during the Great Crusade.

[carlisimo]

It’s definitely something new and unusual. Even in that Scars example, Torghun is given to the legion as a normal human child before any genecrafting happens.

 

This is more like - forgive me for bringing it up - 8th ed. 40k’s stories in which Primaris Marines are grown and trained before delivery. I suppose it’s possible but it seems like a major departure from everything we’ve seen.

 

On the other hand… I think there’ve been past mentions of recruiting being rushed once the Heresy started. All of the induction process examples I can think of from BL novels involved some of the earlier marines; we haven’t really seen them induct under pressure. The White Scars short story Restorer comes closest by showing new recruits, but not the process.

[Leif Bearclaw]

I always took that to refer to Marines created by the Blackshield bands. Which we know happened, and not just the Chimeric gene-seed dudes. If a warband has spat on both the Aquila and the Eye, why bother with Legion history/origin to new recruits?

[Petitioner's City]

Yeah one of the sadness of the heresy novel series winding down is that some of Alan Bligh's  & FW's brilliant ideas that have come late to the book party - blackshields especially - are not going to be explored or even get much of a mention in the literature. There have been some - the shorts and audios about Haar and Morturg - but so little. It would be great to see more mention of various rogue Blackshield, or rogue Legion, factions for sure.

 

Of course, this also applies to the Solar Auxilia, which is such a large model for the army but barely spoken of, due to again being 'late'. French has, given his closeness to the team, used it. But not many more.

[SickSix]

Well think about how many Expeditionary fleets there were.

 

I imagine there were more than a few that were out in Space before being united with their Primarchs. Some of those could have gotten lost until after the HERESY broke out and then never found out who they belonged too?

 

Thats really the best I can come up with?

[StruManChu]

AFAIK, all of the Legions recruited from multiple worlds to meet the demand for new Legionnaires. I can't imagine that each and every one of those gene-labs/recruitment outposts/whatever went along willingly with Horus's rebellion or the resistance against it. 

 

Think about men like Dantioch in the Schadenhold. I'd imagine there was another Iron Warrior at least as stubborn somewhere in the galaxy. Maybe he was a Medicae overseeing Neophyte's recruitment and implantation surgeries. Maybe he, an old Terran (for argument's sake), was so disgusted by his Legion's treachery against the Emperor that he fortified his lab, cast down his oaths and never looked back, fighting the battles and wars that he chooses to, because there's no one else he can trust any more.

 

Maybe he was a Night Lord, filled with a more balanced version of Curze's sense of justice, who saw his Legion stand up less and less for order and right in the galaxy, and instead becoming traitors to the very creed they had sworn to follow. 

 

Perhaps he was a Raven Guard, a veteran of Deliverance, who could not reconcile the idea that Corax was siding not with Horus, a Liberator, but instead with what was becoming an oppressive regime. 

 

Cut off from their Legions in the midst of a galaxy in flames, any one of this type of Legionnaire could decide to forgo certain aspects of their charge's Hypnotic-Suggestive training. The new marines would learn how to fight and win battles and wars, they would learn of the sacred bolter and chainsword, and they would learn of the galaxy at large, but they would never learn of their place within it beyond what their commanders would allow them to. 

 

The 30k setting has an enormous scope for this kind of thing. 

[Zuvassin]

True, but the labs wouldn't be that isolated, would they?

 

There's a short story in one of the anthologies about the Sisters of Silence hunting down a black ship after it failed its third check-in - I would think there'd be similar systems (esp once the Heresy began) to keep in contact with and verify the loyalty of the various gene-labs, training grounds, etc. - wherever the Imperium is expecting fresh batches of Astartes for the loyalist Legions to arise.

 

I'd expect the legions themselves to similarly maintain communications, and thus control over them - either loyalist or traitor.

[StruManChu]

I don't know... As much as the traitors planned the Heresy out and would have had those lines of communication and protocol established to ensure the security of their geneseed, no plan survives contact with the enemy. Could be that the ship sent to check in is caught in a tendril of the Ruinstorm and thrown off course or destroyed.

 

Similarly, the Apothecarion/Medicae posted at the labs would be aware of the Legion's protocol and be smart enough to subvert it for long enough to get their recruits to a battle-ready state. The lab will need defending when the time comes. However in their haste in doing so, they chose to sacrifice portions of the new recruit's subliminal training regimen, including parts of their origin.

 

Space Marines born out of a gene-lab and thrown into the galaxy as little more than neophytes would go some distance to explain their lack of standard gear and poorer armour, etc. It's all cobbled together based on what the Medicae staff could give them out of the spares and repairs stuff. They don't get the shiny new stuff from the Legion Armoury, they get the leftovers. The bits picked off the bodies that didn't side with the Medicae when they made it clear they weren't siding with the rest of their Legion.

[Lord_Caerolion]

Plus, the galaxy is a very big place, and interstellar communication isn't exactly reliable, nor interstellar travel. It's not too hard for things to fall in between the cracks.

[Zuvassin]

All fair points. Thanks for the discussion, everyone.

[Kasper_Hawser]

My two cents on what scenario of a legionaire not knowing his parent legion:

 

1) Alpha Legion brainwashing nonsense at the Neophyte stage. This actually happened in a 40K short story called Long Games at Carachs or something like that. Brainwash until forget what legion they were originally intended.

 

2) Pre-Primarch discovery exedition fleet as mentioned by somone above, only returning to galaxy at large during HH, then unable to identify which primarch is the primarch of which legion, especially if it is the Istvaan 3 survivors. GW is messed up this way, you think the most powerful or advanced military form in the Heresy would have better communication updates.

[Felix Antipodes]

Yeah one of the sadness of the heresy novel series winding down is that some of Alan Bligh's  & FW's brilliant ideas that have come late to the book party - blackshields especially - are not going to be explored or even get much of a mention in the literature. There have been some - the shorts and audios about Haar and Morturg - but so little. It would be great to see more mention of various rogue Blackshield, or rogue Legion, factions for sure.

 

Of course, this also applies to the Solar Auxilia, which is such a large model for the army but barely spoken of, due to again being 'late'. French has, given his closeness to the team, used it. But not many more.

I'm hoping that we get a better showing of the Black Shields and their fate in the Scouring series that has been hinted at as following the HH finale. I would be disappointed if they did such a series and didn't touch on the major upheavals caused by the reformation of the Auxilia into the Guard and Navy.