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Okay...get ready for this.
Yesterday, I was reading my SM codex, and by chance flipped to the double-sheet map showing the location of chapter planets. It was then that I noticed Prism near the top right hand corner. I know it's the Rainbow Warriors chapter's homeplanet, but what was odd was that "records deleted" statement instead of the chapter name. And it wasn't odd that the records had been deleted, but that it reminded me of something, but I couldn't think of what it was. Then it hit me.
The lost legions.
Now this is pure speculation, but is it possible that in the current 40k fluff the Rainbow warriors are one of the lost legions? I dearly hope they are, if purely for the epic lulz it would inspire. To quote that annoying world cup advert-Maybe, just maybe....

/discuss.

If the name of one of the biggest mysteries in the war-torn universe of 40k is the rainbow warriors, then it has lost all credibility.

Gw designers have been qouted as saying that the lost legions are lost to give players chance to make stuff up.

Sorry to shatter your theory little lord.

VikingScott wrote:Gw designers have been qouted as saying that the lost legions are lost to give players chance to make stuff up.

Sorry to shatter your theory little lord.

+1

To be precise 1 traitor legion and 1 loyalist legion.

So all the little girls and boys could make their own backgrounds back when GW didn't have a clue about grabbing pocket money.

Rainbow warriors were a documented chapter, never a legion.

I acctually read a pretty good interpretation about the Rainbow Warriors, it was pure fan fic but the guy got into stuff like how the colors represented what company each marine was part of. Red: Assault, Blue: Tactical, Yellow: Support and so on. He got into some pretty good stuff about how there was no coherancy between the companies because of this and how the chapter master struggled to keep them from attacking eachother. Also I believe he made them a blood angel spin off.

And yes the two "missing legions" are ones that GW wanted to leave open for its fans. Read any of the homebrew chapters posted on this site and like one in every three of them claim to be from one of the missing Primarchs. Usually the 2nd Legion for some reason.

it's a subtle jab at the "San Fransisco" lifestyle by GW.

Grey Templar wrote:it's a subtle jab at the "San Fransisco" lifestyle by GW.

Ork style subtle, maybe...

Pretty sure the original idea for the Rainbow Warriors comes from the ancient Buddhist legend of enlightened warrior monks, who were able to appear and disappear in a burst of rainbow light. For Buddhists, the rainbow is "the highest state achievable before attaining Nirvana, where individual desire and consciousness are extinguished."

Unfortunately, the Rainbow Warriors are a second founding Chapter, not one of the original 20 Legions.
I loved your thread ranking of the original Legions by the way! Thousand Sons number 3? I can take that.

Actually on wh40k wiki it says they could be named after a greenpeace ship that was sunk in 1987. But SM aren't really known for caring for all living creatures. And the "peace" part of the name does not apply to SM

Weren't they South America-inspired? Jaguar Warriors, etc...

felixthecat345 wrote:Actually on wh40k wiki it says they could be named after a greenpeace ship that was sunk in 1987. But SM aren't really known for caring for all living creatures. And the "peace" part of the name does not apply to SM

Unfortunetly RT was published before the the French claimed a military victory in sinking of the ship, and mentions the Rainbow Warriors

There was a bit of fluff from way back about the Rainbow Warriors having been purged by the Adeptus Sororitas for heresy or witchcraft or some such thing. I would suspect that's the reason for the 'Records Deleted' tag now.

My impression was that the Rainbow Warriors were based on a Pacific Islander or South American sort of theme... just the name doesn't work very well for some, who persist in turning it into some sort of homosexual-related gag. Yay for originality, guys.

Rainbow warriors were inspired by the Aztecs.

Aztec warriors would go into battle with armour adorned in rainbow colours. They were actually pretty hardcore until they met muskets and metal armour.

It was GW's way of appearing to draw on inspiration from around the world (Jaguar warriors) instead of sounding stupid (Space Sharks, Lion El'Johnson, Nevermore...)

It was the 80's in England, everything they did was accidentally racist. Try reading Judge Dredd sometime and cringe at what the South African Judges looked like.

I wasn't even aware there was a debate about this.

I don't remember the South African judges looking especially racist. Or are you talking pre-Pan African Judges, 'cos they are the ones I remember best. (I have read 2000AD all the way back into the late eighties.)

I remember having read some stuff on Rainbow Warriors in WD. Stuff like jokes between designers. I guess this is just one more joke about them.

Spec ops super team Rainbow 6 made rainbows macho so why not?

insaniak wrote:There was a bit of fluff from way back about the Rainbow Warriors having been purged by the Adeptus Sororitas for heresy or witchcraft or some such thing. I would suspect that's the reason for the 'Records Deleted' tag now.

My impression was that the Rainbow Warriors were based on a Pacific Islander or South American sort of theme... just the name doesn't work very well for some, who persist in turning it into some sort of homosexual-related gag. Yay for originality, guys.

it's really ard to resist. Oh yeah, whichcraft? It was probably summoning Slaanesh, if you know what I mean...
*promptly executed by Double-Entendra Commisar*

I think ur right and could the same deal be with the dragon lords of Erwynn's World next to witch it says contact "lost"?

So many damned "Lost Legion" threads, I'm sure this has already been said but GW's official stance is that the Lost Legions only exist so people can create their own special Legion or Chapter, which is rather redundant as the Codex tells you to create your own anyway.

BrotherStynier wrote:So many damned "Lost Legion" threads, I'm sure this has already been said but GW's official stance is that the Lost Legions only exist so people can create their own special Legion or Chapter, which is rather redundant as the Codex tells you to create your own anyway.

I've never actually seen anything 'official' from GW saying that the Lost Legions were there for people to create their own. The only statements I've ever seen on them were more to the effect that they were included for a bit of mystery.

Encouraging players to create their own 'Lost Legions' kind of defies the point of them being 'lost'...

Not their own Lost Legions but create their own Legions because the other two weren't explained. Nearly every GW employee and veteran player I've talked to has said that the Lost Legions are there for the player to come up with their own group.

On the topic of the Rainbow Warriors how ever, not much is known about them, from what I can gather. Lexicanum says much of the same.

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Rainbow_Warriors

They are depicted as being fired upon by the SoBs so in all likely hood the reason for them being deleted could be they did something really terrible and were cleansed.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:Spec ops super team Rainbow 6 made rainbows macho so why not?

Technically, the unit itself is Rainbow, NOT Rainbow 6. Rainbow Six is the Unit Commander as well as the number of its place within the Rainbow section of the US Color Coded War Plans.

But then, I only read the novel, I haven't played the games(where they may have changed it).

BrotherStynier wrote: Nearly every GW employee and veteran player I've talked to has said that the Lost Legions are there for the player to come up with their own group.

Oh, I'm not disputing that a lot of people present it as the reason for them to be in there... but that doesn't make it the 'official' story, nor does it make it actually make any sense...

How can the players come up with a lost legion if all we have to go with is the SM and CSM codex? The SM Codex is for playing SM who follow the Codex Astartes which the two lost legions did not follow since they were deleted before the heresy. The CSM codex has nothing on running a legion.

During the time of the Lost legions we had Jet bikes, and innovations in technology. Our current codexes doesn't cover any of that stuff.

So can someone explain the logic of the lost legions being there for us as players to make our own stuff up?

insaniak wrote:

BrotherStynier wrote: Nearly every GW employee and veteran player I've talked to has said that the Lost Legions are there for the player to come up with their own group.

Oh, I'm not disputing that a lot of people present it as the reason for them to be in there... but that doesn't make it the 'official' story, nor does it make it actually make any sense...

Well it works for me, for the time being. We aren't getting anything else from GW about Legions II and XI, all I know is that the Legion of the Damned are not them, as they are the Fire Hawks, and I'd also have to say that the Rainbow Warriors are not one of them either. We wouldn't have them shown with a paint scheme if they were one of the Lost.

It's really a pity about the Rainbow Warriors. I kinda like their name, and their chapter symbol (the winged lightning) is IMHO one of the coolest around. On the other hand there's no denying that the paint scheme (blue armour with multi-coloured stripes along the helmet) is rather weak, though, as is the lack of background.

The Aztec/South American theme is a thing somebody on the Web came up with due to the Hopi (I think ?) origin of the term. I think that's an idea worth exploring, especially since Native American themes haven't been particularly explored/adapted for 40k apart from the Deathwing story. Marines converted with Lizardmen weapons could look pretty nice. Dammit, now I'm thinking about building and painting a squad...


As for the Lost Legions: Hopefully GW will never name or explain these. What I like about those two legions is the idea that subjecting two of the legions to what amounts to 'damnatio memoriae' makes the grimdark of 40k even grimdarker. I mean, the Imperium didn't do this to the Traitor Legions, so what happened to these two must have been far, far worse...

Platuan4th wrote:

KamikazeCanuck wrote:Spec ops super team Rainbow 6 made rainbows macho so why not?

Technically, the unit itself is Rainbow, NOT Rainbow 6. Rainbow Six is the Unit Commander as well as the number of its place within the Rainbow section of the US Color Coded War Plans.

But then, I only read the novel, I haven't played the games(where they may have changed it).

Yes I think your right. Who was Rainbow 6 again? John Clark or something? What's this about US Color coded War Plans? I figured it was because it was supposed to be a multinational unit and include all the colours of the flags. But I think I just came up with that Theory on my own.

Rainbow 6 is John Clark, former Navy Seal and Domingo Chavez's father in law.

Rainbow's name does come from the fact that it is a multinational counter-terror team.