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Care to share some headcannon? This could either be an unusual interpretation of the fluff, or a modification made to the setting or storyline based on games you have played.

I'll post mine in a bit, but my phobe can't handle the effort atm.

Heres my head cannon for one of the primarchs.

"I like to think that one of the Primarchs ended up on an Ork world and fought his way up the ranks to end up as a Warboss (typical Blood Axes, having an umie as a boss). The Emperor shows up to collect him but soon discovered that Ork tradition runs deep. After a while all the WAAAGHs, looting, and calling the other Primarchs gitz pushed the Emperior's patience to the limit. The Wolves where called to end Warmarch Viridius Corium and his Astorkes. The Emperor declared that all records to be purged and usage of the word "git" by any Astartes to be punishable by death."

My favourite bit of HeadCanon, I link it every time one of these threads come up

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/613298.page

TLDR - LOTD Are exploiting a Warp current that goes back in time to maximise their effectiveness.

Post-Guilliman reforms Space Marines are superior to their Legiones Astartes counterparts in almost every way on a marine by marine basis.

 TheCustomLime wrote:
Post-Guilliman reforms Space Marines are superior to their Legiones Astartes counterparts in almost every way on a marine by marine basis.

That is probably not even headcanon, I am sure I read about it in the FW HH books somewhere.

My favourite headcanon is that Chaos does not exist, but is an extremely extensive false flag operation by the High Lords of Terra in order to keep citizens obedient and provide excuses for eliminating dissidents. Pretty much like in the book 1984, where the other nations (Eurasia and Eastasia) might not even exist.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 TheCustomLime wrote:
Post-Guilliman reforms Space Marines are superior to their Legiones Astartes counterparts in almost every way on a marine by marine basis.

That is probably not even headcanon, I am sure I read about it in the FW HH books somewhere.

My favourite headcanon is that Chaos does not exist, but is an extremely extensive false flag operation by the High Lords of Terra in order to keep citizens obedient and provide excuses for eliminating dissidents. Pretty much like in the book 1984, where the other nations (Eurasia and Eastasia) might not even exist.

That's not headcanon, its more... re imagined 40k.

Now that the Space Marines have got another new aircraft (and note that a lot of the recent kits have been explicitly called 'new additions to the armoury'), I'm fairly sure that this is foreshadowing a progression of the fluff.

The point of most of the tenets of the Codex Astartes was to make sure that individual military bodies (Space Marine Chapters, Guard Regiments, Naval Fleets, etc) could not rebel en-mass as they had done previously. For this reason, the Guard are limited to transport aircraft, and must arrange the aid of the Navy if they want any aerial support. Similarly, Space Marines lack the significant manpower and heavy equipment required to persecute campaigns alone, and must rely on other bodies to consolidate territories and facilities they claim.

When the Dark Angels codex got aircraft which were quite evidently intended to be dogfighters (as opposed to ground-attack or transport craft), I began to wonder if it was simply an oversight or if it might indicate a gradual relaxing of Imperial law.

Now that the vanilla Codex is getting an interceptor aircraft (as per the recent leaks), I'm convinced that we'll soon be progressing into an era of fluff where it's easier than ever for Chapters to break their oaths. Add to this the situations described in Warzones Baal, Damocles and Fenris, and you have a recipe for some serious Grimdark.

Will enough Marines keep their honour to defend the Imperium against the encroaching darkness at the close of the 41st Millennium? I, for one, will be very interested to find out.

That Eldar mythic cycle of the War of the Heavens is simply a re-telling of the actual War in Heaven between the Old Ones, the C'tan, The Necrons and the newly emergent Eldar after being passed down through generations.

As such the major players in the war secured places in the myths as the Eldar pantheon with the Laughing God being the C'tan the Deciever who since he played both sides of the war managed to weasle his way into the Eldar mythic cycle as one of their own gods. Due to the Eldars highly psychic nature and the relative peace of the Warp at the time of conception the Eldars worship of these beings coeleced in the warp to form the actual Eldar gods, shaped from the facets of the Old Ones and C'tan they where based off.

This explains the link between Cegorarch and the Deciever as well the mixing of the Myths between Isha creating the eldar and the fact of the Old Ones creating them.

9' tall Marines.

THEY ARE THE BEST ONES, AND WHOEVER SAYS OTHERWISE IS GETTING A DESPOILER BATTLESHIP TO THE GONADS.

Ooh. Forgot to mention a really good one:

The birth of the Emperor on Terra coincided with the distant fall of the Eldar and the beginning of the end of the Warp Storms of Old Night. Due to the nature of the Warp, the relative timescales of humanity and the Eldar are fluid enough that this isn't a massive leap.

Therefore, the Emperor is a marriage of the collective psychic might of the human race and the vestigial power of the Eldar pantheon (minus Khaine, Cegorach and possibly Isha); a literal god, designed via something one might term 'fate' to acheive the downfall of Chaos. Whatever mechanism allows the Tau to exist as they do might be the missing piece of the puzzle.

 Ashiraya wrote:
9' tall Marines.

THEY ARE THE BEST ONES, AND WHOEVER SAYS OTHERWISE IS GETTING A DESPOILER BATTLESHIP TO THE GONADS.

I love gigantism. It really makes Astartes seem giant... and makes Ogryns fethin' monolithic

My personal theory about the 2 lost primarchs
They turned to chaos long before the heresy.
So they got wiped out right away because it was a quick betrayal but not of several legions at once. So they got destroyed.

The entire galaxy is inside a snowglobe owned by a boy named Tommy Westphall.

My main piece of headcanon is that Kroot don't like being called 'bird men'.

Although I do buy into the Lost and the Damned being each lost Legion respectively. As in, perhaps one was sent on an expedition, and never returned, and the other having done something to have gone rogue.

Since there's so much headcanon about the lost Primarchs here, I might as well share mine.

At least one of the Primarchs was killed not because he was corrupted by some evil faction, but because he was either a staunch pacifist who refused to fight and kill for the Emperor, or a staunch believer in individual liberty who refused support the Emperor's tyrannical regime. More than him as a person, his ideas were a threat to the Great Crusade, which is why he had to be so thoroughly wiped from the records.

I like this a lot better than yet another Chaos corrupting. It brings something different to the table, and opens the door to explore the dark, violent, totalitarian underbelly of the Great Crusade and the Imperial Truth.

I have two pieces of headcannon. One for a fluff interpretation, which is that the Emperor was far from being a benevolent ruler and was in fact a tyrant. The story of him being around since prehistory is a lie fabricated by him to obtain power. The traitor legions were trying to save humanity from his incompetent and destructive rule, but fell to chaos doing it. Instead of being corrupted and /then/ going rogue. This also has me interpreting that most of the HH books are fabrications.

The other is a story forged by my 40k battles, which is that the Ultramarines are under assault from multiple renegade chapters (good geneseed is rare yo), and hadto call in support from some local BT. But rather than being assisted hy the BT, they have been accused of heresy too. Queue a lot of SM forces warring between eachother in a sort of mini HH event.

@fallinq: Not to mention that if they were corrupted by Chaos and has their records expunged, their Legions would have had to be really, really small (otherwise there would have likely been a protracted war that would have been nigh impossible to cover up).

I personally have seen to many poorly thought out headcannons about the Two Missing Primarchs and their Legions to feel confident enough to think I can come up with something better.

If I had to say, however:

One of the Legions was destroyed along with their Primarch (the Why and How I never really thought too hard on because I kept running into problems).

The other is still active in an extremely limited capacity beyond the borders of the Imperium and trying not to be found. I haven't decided whether or not their Primarch would be alive and well, but if he was, that could add to the dynamic of the End Times if that ever came around.

I would SWEAR this was in an old Epic book but I've never been able to find it.

Failed Space Marine aspriants are turned into servitors and permanently installed in Rhinos and other vehicles as driver and gunner servitors.

(additional head canon) Particularly distinguished ones are given the honorary rank of battle brother and allowed to wear marine armor. Other vehicle commanders are heavily injured marines who can no long fight on foot.

So all those guys poking out of hatches, they're honorary marines, and probably don't have legs.

No one is going to waste a fully able-bodied marine manning a tank.

The Emperor deliberately created the Thousand Sons with a flaw in their geneseed as he knew that Magnus would never leave his Sons. He expected the Thousand Sons to die off, and left without purpose, Magnus would assist the Emperor and sit on the Golden Throne.

The Emperor wasn't being a total asshat, and rather than let Angron die on Nuceria, he did actually save him out of love. Oh, also that he knew that Angron would become the Prince of Blood there and then if he had taken part in the battle. Not wanting one of his sons to become a Daemon Prince so soon, he abducts him.

The Tyranid were the last weapon created by the Old Ones before the Necrontyr destroy them. The final bastion for the Old Ones is destroyed and the Tyranids are set loose. But where the Old Ones have not fully completed the weapon they are released without control. Eventually the Hive Mind would form.

There are also bits of fluff out there that I've come across over the years which, like Kid_Kyoto, I can't find any more so become head canon until the resource is found. I honestly haven't thought about this for awhile though so can't remember them at the moment ...

Edit: I remembered a couple. One was that suits of Power Armour have Machine Spirits and on some occasions they don't like there wearer. Also certain Space Marines have benefited from being implanted with Gene-seed that was taken from a veteran and was an all round better Marine for it, sharing in the veterans abilities and memories.

 Spineyguy wrote:
Ooh. Forgot to mention a really good one:

The birth of the Emperor on Terra coincided with the distant fall of the Eldar and the beginning of the end of the Warp Storms of Old Night. Due to the nature of the Warp, the relative timescales of humanity and the Eldar are fluid enough that this isn't a massive leap.

Therefore, the Emperor is a marriage of the collective psychic might of the human race and the vestigial power of the Eldar pantheon (minus Khaine, Cegorach and possibly Isha); a literal god, designed via something one might term 'fate' to acheive the downfall of Chaos. Whatever mechanism allows the Tau to exist as they do might be the missing piece of the puzzle.

Uh, slight problem with your headcanon. The Emperor was about thirty thousand years old at the start of the Old Night.

Here's one of mine;

The Tyranids are the final evolution of the Old Ones, as they pushed their genetic and psychic technology to the point that they achieved singularity and ascended to become a gestalt psychic entity. The bodies they had left behind were then essentially useless to them, but retained some semblance of life and so became avatars - meat-puppets for the Old One Gestalt (AKA, the Hive Mind) that they twist and mutate to suit their whims and needs. When they ascended, however, they lost the mortal spark of innovation, becoming trapped by their own warp-based nature, meaning that they could no longer design new genetic sequences - only repurpose existing ones.

With absolute psychic might available to them and their mastery of biology, and unaware of the Necron coup that made their worries unfounded, they abandoned their inorganic technology because it represented a weakness that the C'tan could exploit.

And that's why the Tyranids only use biotech.

for me one of my favorite bits of head cannon is what the Adeptus Mechanicus chant. I'm convinced they're chanting scientific formula and materials from tech manuals without even understanding what they're actually SAYING.

so a Adeptus Mechanius hymn might be something like *to the tune of a gregorian chant* E equals MC squaaaaaaaaaaaared!"

Brian, that's not far off. Canonically the Mechanicus catechisms and hymns are all user manuals and construction manuals for various things, because the Mechanicum-as-religion rose from the survivors of the Fall turning all their knowledge into an oral tradition to make sure it survived the database corruptions.

The reason that Shadowsun would have to retire to have children is because Tau reproduce by growing massive ovipositors and laying eggs like the Queen from Aliens. Tau naturally raise their young communally, not because of a collective culture.



The Space Sharks, like the Black Templar of Old, number at least 10,000 and may be at Legion strength. Without oversight from the Imperium, they've grown to ridiculous numbers.

... I was about to argue, but no, that's a legitimate piece of head canon... and explains a lot about you.

Another one, the Necrons and the Tyranids are the Lords of Order.

Necrons want to eliminate chaos by eliminating everyone.

Tyranids will go even further eliminating everyone and turning their biomass into a single collective mind.

The Emperor is an aspiring lord of order, he too realizes that ultimately it is emotions the fuel chaos and seeks to create an Imperium where everyone wears grey and feels nothing.

My headcannon: Guilliman was one of the most diabolical traitors of the heresy. Without being long winded: his legion was delayed just enough to ensure that the emperor + other legions would die or be crippled by horus at tera, then he swoops in, outnumbering them all with his arguably forced control of the imperial army and navy, DEMANDING his brothers bow to his ideals (his beef with the Alpha legion, BTW ). Thankfully for him, the only primarch with the political backing to stop him(sanguinius) happened to die shortly before guilliman arrived. Point in case: the Imperial fists (the legion arguably the next step down in political power) was fired upon for resisting this enforced ideal. Guilliman for archtraitor 30,000!

It's more in depth than that, but this is a bit of a tl;dr version.

1) Space Marine fleets are much smaller than generally depicted. Most chapters have couple of strike cruisers, some smaller ships and no battle barges. Fleet based chapters may have a single battle barge. This is because these ships are absolutely huge, and even the smaller ships should be realistically able to carry and deploy much larger number of marines than depicted.

2) Eldar gods were warp ghosts of the Old Ones.

3) Most of what we hear about the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy era are distorted and exaggerated legends. Emperor was not tens of thousands of years old giant. He was a powerful psyker born in the Age of Strife, and looked like a normal man. Primarchs were somewhat more powerful (and only slightly, if at all, larger) than normal space marines, but not demigods.

4) The Emperor may or may not be dead. Miracles may or may not be real. I like to keep this in quantum superposition, thus I disregard any evidence that would collapse this clearly in either direction.

5) Perpetuals do not exist.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Brennonjw wrote:
My headcannon: Guilliman was one of the most diabolical traitors of the heresy. Without being long winded: his legion was delayed just enough to ensure that the emperor + other legions would die or be crippled by horus at tera, then he swoops in, outnumbering them all with his arguably forced control of the imperial army and navy, DEMANDING his brothers bow to his ideals (his beef with the Alpha legion, BTW ). Thankfully for him, the only primarch with the political backing to stop him(sanguinius) happened to die shortly before guilliman arrived. Point in case: the Imperial fists (the legion arguably the next step down in political power) was fired upon for resisting this enforced ideal. Guilliman for archtraitor 30,000!

It's more in depth than that, but this is a bit of a tl;dr version.

I like this! Fits how he formed Codex Astartes and forced the Legions to disband, only to give his own chapter a small empire to rule.

I think the reason Marines have such large fleets is so that they can fight well against enemy fleets impeding their work. As they are a rapid strike force, they cannot rely on the ponderous Navy to cover that aspect, so they have their own ships (bombardment cannons!) to deter any such interference.

I'd call it less a headcannon, more a musing that fit a situation, but me & a friend believe that at least one of the two lost Primarchs was quite simply never recovered. Either he was cast out of the galaxy when the Pantheon scattered the primarchs, or he was killed in infancy by whatever happened to be on the planet he was on.

 Ashiraya wrote:
I think the reason Marines have such large fleets is so that they can fight well against enemy fleets impeding their work. As they are a rapid strike force, they cannot rely on the ponderous Navy to cover that aspect, so they have their own ships (bombardment cannons!) to deter any such interference.

Sure, but I prefer the focus to be on the actual marines, the ground forces. Besides, I'd assume that their ships are relatively powerful for their size; Gladius frigate is like Defiant in Star Trek, capable of taking on much larger (and clumsier) ships.