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Chaos claims the unwary or the incomplete. A true man may flinch away its embrace, if he is stalwart, and he girds his soul with the armour of contempt." - Gideon Ravenor, The Spheres of Longing

clearly they are still loyal if they wish to be

Why does the Alpha legion seem like Darth Vader?

I mean, join chaos to defeat it, join the darkside to throw the emperor(Palpatine) down a hole.
Seems to me these are very similar.

This completely off topic but Darth vadar didnt join the dark side to defeat it, he joined it to save his wife.

Now i guess they relate a little bit...but its a stretch.

It is possible that they are doing things much like what Cypher the Fallen Angel is implied to be doing. Perhaps their use of cultists is deliberately tailored to subtly goad Imperial forces to cut out the cancers in their own society.

There's one more thing that hasn't been talked about at all. Alpharius Omegon is a primarch, with unrevealed powers. He/they might well have seen the visions of the Cabal with a psyker's eye, with both options present foreseen to their respective endpoints. But AO may well have seen more, a third option to keep his Emperor alive in some fashion while allowing the Heresy to take its dark course. If there was somebody willing to out-subtle Chaos to save humanity, it would take the sneakiest of sneaks.

I like that thought, sounds very....sinister.

As for Alpharius Omegon....I do believe it was never confirmed if they were the same person, or brothers. My interpretation however is that Alpharius had a duel personality, and if thats the case his plan is kaputt because Guilliman supposedly killed him.

There are definitely two Alpha Legion primarchs: Alpharius and Omegon. Guilliman killed someone calling himself Alpharius. It could have been neither of those two.

Read Legion if you like Alpha Legion.

Kazerkinelite wrote:I like that thought, sounds very....sinister.

As for Alpharius Omegon....I do believe it was never confirmed if they were the same person, or brothers. My interpretation however is that Alpharius had a duel personality, and if thats the case his plan is kaputt because Guilliman supposedly killed him.

Im pretty it was confirmed that they are brothers. and one of them is dead. killed by an Imperial assassin.

Vulpes89 wrote:
Im pretty it was confirmed that they are brothers. and one of them is dead. killed by an Imperial assassin.

Incorrect. Guilliman killed someone calling himself Alpharius. It could have been Alpharius, Omegon, or any other Alpha Legion marine. We don't know.

The only Primarch not killed by another primarch or the Emperor was The Night Haunter (by a Callidus Assassin)

Fairfeldia wrote:Chaos claims the unwary or the incomplete. A true man may flinch away its embrace, if he is stalwart, and he girds his soul with the armour of contempt." - Gideon Ravenor, The Spheres of Longing

clearly they are still loyal if they wish to be

Gideon Ravenor, though a cool guy, is an Imperial Inquisitor and severely biased against Chaos.

DarknessEternal wrote:

Vulpes89 wrote:
Im pretty it was confirmed that they are brothers. and one of them is dead. killed by an Imperial assassin.

Incorrect. Guilliman killed someone calling himself Alpharius. It could have been Alpharius, Omegon, or any other Alpha Legion marine. We don't know.

The only Primarch not killed by another primarch or the Emperor was The Night Haunter (by a Callidus Assassin)

don't you think guilliman would have known if it was an ordinary marine? I mean primarchs are kind of noticeable beings...I'm pretty sure guilliman wouldn't be that stupid.

Wulfe Luer wrote:It is possible that they are doing things much like what Cypher the Fallen Angel is implied to be doing. Perhaps their use of cultists is deliberately tailored to subtly goad Imperial forces to cut out the cancers in their own society.

There's one more thing that hasn't been talked about at all. Alpharius Omegon is a primarch, with unrevealed powers. He/they might well have seen the visions of the Cabal with a psyker's eye, with both options present foreseen to their respective endpoints. But AO may well have seen more, a third option to keep his Emperor alive in some fashion while allowing the Heresy to take its dark course. If there was somebody willing to out-subtle Chaos to save humanity, it would take the sneakiest of sneaks.

Wait a minute, whats cypher doing?

Kazerkinelite wrote:don't you think guilliman would have known if it was an ordinary marine? I mean primarchs are kind of noticeable beings...I'm pretty sure guilliman wouldn't be that stupid.

Alpharius was the shortest Primarch and was known to conceal himself as a regular Astartes. So there's no way of telling.

Plus, Omegon and Alpharius shared a soul, so at best Guilliman killed one of the bodies. If anything, the surviving twin is probably stronger for it.

Of course, since GW will never significantly advance the storyline, we'll probably never know.

I'd have thought that Guilliman would have been able to tell his brother from amongst the crowd, yaknow, due to the unique spiritual connection the HH books always hark on about.

Possibly, possibly not. We don't know if the other primarchs were aware of the fact that Alpha Legion has two, to begin with. We do know that Alpha Legion delights in deception, so there's just as much chance both primarchs are alive as not.

As far as their loyalty, they're loyal to humanity, but not the Imperium. They work with Chaos, but don't ultimately serve Chaos.

Loyal to humanity when their goal is to completely annihilate all humans? Uh... no. Their loyalty is to the Emperor because they believe he would want Chaos destroyed no matter what.

Of course, the only thing that made the risk of a full-on Chaos incursion through humanity ala the Fall of the Eldar is the Imperium connecting so many disparate worlds together. If things had been left in pre-Crusade status, there wouldn't be any Tyranids, and any individual empires wouldn't be large enough to cause another Chaos God to awaken (not to mention the fact that we see multiple examples of cultures that actively worship Chaos and prosper just fine). Hell, there probably wouldn't even be enough organized expeditions to awaken the Necrons.

Man, the galaxy would have been so much better without the Emperor and his genetic monstrosities.

There are hints of this, but I seriously doubt they have any significant positive contribution to imperial affairs. Yes, alpharius mentions some things about being loyal, but that doesn't mean those are the exact intentions of the legion itself.

Seaward wrote:
As far as their loyalty, they're loyal to humanity, but not the Imperium. They work with Chaos, but don't ultimately serve Chaos.

All those planets they've ravaged with chaos cults and summoned daemons probably disagree.

Omegus wrote:Man, the galaxy would have been so much better without the Emperor and his genetic monstrosities.

Yes....but we wouldn't have the great universe which is Warhammer 40k

I think its another tragedy in the making for any future shocking revelations. While the original goal was a noble one to try to save the Emperors vision of humanity surviving since then much has happened and things ofcourse change.
Aside from when you taske a role on you can become lost in it, theres the old saying about the abyss too...

Pity that the 40K universe wont be advanced and some of these questions answered with future novels/ campaigns etc I think it would be an interesting one to see what ultimately happened with the plan

I'm telling you - it is obvious what happened.

(Well, obvious to me!)

They started out playing a third option - destroy Chaos, save the Emperor AND wipe out the Cabal.

Guilliman killed Sheed Ranko masquerading as The Primarch.

The Legion is now free and clear to do... whatever it is they've planned to do.

Now, somewhere between then and now, the Brother Primarchs (the only true Brothers amongst the Primarchs!) had a falling out, a mini-Civil War.

One is loyal to the Emperor, the other has, more or less, gone Traitor.

Which one is which?

Who knows!

Evidence or conjecture?

Omegus wrote:Loyal to humanity when their goal is to completely annihilate all humans? Uh... no.

Uh, yes. People who put their dogs down are pretty loyal to them, I think, but they make the decision to spare them long, drawn-out pain in favor of a quick, clean end. Alpharius saw that Horus failing to triumph would result in thousands of years of darkness and despair for humanity, whereas annihilating humanity early on would be, relatively speaking, quick and painless.

They're specifically not loyal to the Emperor, in fact, at least not in the way one would think; Legion makes it clear that the Alpha Legion had already long since come to the conclusion that the Emperor's ideal utopia simply wasn't possible, and was one big fool's errand. They're trying to save the Emperor and humanity from something they can't see coming.

DarknessEternal wrote:

Seaward wrote:
As far as their loyalty, they're loyal to humanity, but not the Imperium. They work with Chaos, but don't ultimately serve Chaos.

All those planets they've ravaged with chaos cults and summoned daemons probably disagree.

I've seen zero evidence that they make use of daemonic summoning, to be honest. You've asserted this a couple times now - could you point me towards the fluff?

Indeed. If I remember correctly, only the Cultists in Alpha Legion armies could carry Icons to summon daemons from. They could, however, field possessed and Daemon Princes.

Seaward wrote:
I've seen zero evidence that they make use of daemonic summoning, to be honest.

Lexicanum, and earlier versions of Codex Chaos should do it.

DarknessEternal wrote:

Seaward wrote:
I've seen zero evidence that they make use of daemonic summoning, to be honest.

Lexicanum, and earlier versions of Codex Chaos should do it.

Well, I consider Lexicanum to be about as reliable as GW itself considers Lexicanum to be.

As for earlier versions of the codex...eh. Space Marines were convicts in earlier versions of their codex. And as someone pointed out, their cultist troops could summon, but not actual AL CSMs.

All fluff prior to LEGION, while not strictly invalidated, needs to be reevaluated.

And really, don't take anything regarding what the Legion agreed to do for the Cabal as gospel from LEGION.

Simply put, we don't know what's going on.

Anyone who claims to 'know' is clearly... lying?

In the version of the fluff that will exist in my head until some author cruelly wipes it out, the following would happen.

Alpharius and Omegon were aware if the Imperium long before they reluctantly revealed (one of) themselves. They (collectively) are their own masters and in everything they do they intend to retain control of their own fate. Though loyal to the Emperor in a personal sense, they don't appreciate the yoke of the Imperium, and see its numerous flaws. This makes them the polar opposite of the vile traitor Guilliman, who is loyal to the idea of the Imperium but doesn't lift a finger to help the Emperor.

After Legion, they play along with the Cabal long enough to learn what they can, then wipe them out (nobody pulls their strings). They see the Heresy as an opportunity to arrive at a point where they are not beholden to anyone, Imperium or Traitor. They are somehow involved in unravelling Guilliman's plans for an sucessionist Imperium Secondus, forcing him to intervene in the aftermath of the Heresy so as to guarantee an Imperium strong enough to hold off its competitors but not to complete the galactic conquest that would have seen them forever lose their independence of action.

LOL, if Guilliman tried to send his ships to help the Emperor, they would have likely been stuck in the warp like the Wolves and Dark Angels (?), arriving in the very last moment.

He was aware his actions would be seen as treasonous, but if nothing he else, he was supremely logical and did the most logical thing. If the Imperium won, he would have a full Legion in place to chase out the Traitor remnants and keep any survivors from getting their own ideas of treachery (i.e. what really happened). If the traitors won, the Imperium and its ideals would still be able to survive intact in the Ultima Segmentum (the largest chunk of the Empire) and continue the battle. There wasn't anything secessionist about it.

But way to attribute magical powers to the Alpha Legion. As much as I like them, they weren't dictating what Guilliman did (except when they owned him after he "killed" Alpharius). And the Cabal is doing just fine; at the very least they have survivors among the Watchers in the Dark that hang out with the Dark Angels.

.....huh I wonder if he was waiting to see who won and then sided with the victor(note I am on book 2 of HH)

Temujin wrote:In the version of the fluff that will exist in my head until some author cruelly wipes it out, the following would happen.

Alpharius and Omegon were aware if the Imperium long before they reluctantly revealed (one of) themselves. They (collectively) are their own masters and in everything they do they intend to retain control of their own fate. Though loyal to the Emperor in a personal sense, they don't appreciate the yoke of the Imperium, and see its numerous flaws. This makes them the polar opposite of the vile traitor Guilliman, who is loyal to the idea of the Imperium but doesn't lift a finger to help the Emperor.

After Legion, they play along with the Cabal long enough to learn what they can, then wipe them out (nobody pulls their strings). They see the Heresy as an opportunity to arrive at a point where they are not beholden to anyone, Imperium or Traitor. They are somehow involved in unravelling Guilliman's plans for an sucessionist Imperium Secondus, forcing him to intervene in the aftermath of the Heresy so as to guarantee an Imperium strong enough to hold off its competitors but not to complete the galactic conquest that would have seen them forever lose their independence of action.

That's not bad at all!

And remember, one consistent piece in their background is no one knows the Legion's homeworld...