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According to Priestly, the two missing Legions got pwned and shamed, hence their numbers were dropped. But I've also heard that they were meant for the audience to create their own Loyalist and Traitor Legions, something that has been rendered obsolete due to splitting into chapters and fracturing into warbands.

I've also read somewhere that GW had too many Titan models, hence they came up with the idea of an Imperial civil war, the Horus Heresy.

I think originally they were made so you could create your own chapter which, like you said, was removed when chapters and warbands became a thing.

It's just another mystery in the dark crevices of the universe.

Maximus Bitch wrote:
According to Priestly, the two missing Legions got pwned and shamed, hence their numbers were dropped. But I've also heard that they were meant for the audience to create their own Loyalist and Traitor Legions, something that has been rendered obsolete due to splitting into chapters and fracturing into warbands.

Back in 1st edition there were three missing legions, but there was no mystery involved: they were the Isstvan V loyalists, who were struck from Imperial records due to their annihilation, presumably as a nod to the three Roman legions who suffered a similar fate after being betrayed and massacred by their erstwhile allies in the Teutoberg Forest. GW allowed people to make up their own first founding legions at the time by simply not printing a complete list. When 2nd edition came around (one of the few fluff changes to ever actually take place at an edition change) GW suddenly gave us the modern list and two mysterious missing legions with no explanation, many have long suspect it was so players could make their own first founding legions (else why drop the number to two if not to allow a homebrew loyalist to face a homebrew traitor?) but there was no official backing for that theory until one of Dan Abnetts Black Library video's 2-3 years ago.

Maximus Bitch wrote:
I've also read somewhere that GW had too many Titan models, hence they came up with the idea of an Imperial civil war, the Horus Heresy.

It wasn't that they had too many models, rather they wanted to a big stompy robot game (Adeptus Titanicus) but couldn't afford to produce more than a single model in plastic, so they created the civil war so they could just make do with a single model cast in different colours.

They have hinted several times that things went wrong and it was the ending of the two Legions. From what I gather one Legion never really made it into full production really but other Legion was hunted down by the Wolves and then the survivors were dispersed into the Ultramarines. Why they have these two missing Legions, no one knows but they like to hint at them ominously. Like this picture of Malcador the Sigilite where on his throne there are the numbers II and XI, the numbers of those lost Legions. I have never seen GW actually hint that they were going to do anything with them, only that they existed. Maybe they would in some galaxy shattering change for the future.

 Gashrog wrote:

Maximus Bitch wrote:
According to Priestly, the two missing Legions got pwned and shamed, hence their numbers were dropped. But I've also heard that they were meant for the audience to create their own Loyalist and Traitor Legions, something that has been rendered obsolete due to splitting into chapters and fracturing into warbands.

Back in 1st edition there were three missing legions, but there was no mystery involved: they were the Isstvan V loyalists, who were struck from Imperial records due to their annihilation, presumably as a nod to the three Roman legions who suffered a similar fate after being betrayed and massacred by their erstwhile allies in the Teutoberg Forest. GW allowed people to make up their own first founding legions at the time by simply not printing a complete list. When 2nd edition came around (one of the few fluff changes to ever actually take place at an edition change) GW suddenly gave us the modern list and two mysterious missing legions with no explanation, many have long suspect it was so players could make their own first founding legions (else why drop the number to two if not to allow a homebrew loyalist to face a homebrew traitor?) but there was no official backing for that theory until one of Dan Abnetts Black Library video's 2-3 years ago.

Maximus Bitch wrote:
I've also read somewhere that GW had too many Titan models, hence they came up with the idea of an Imperial civil war, the Horus Heresy.

It wasn't that they had too many models, rather they wanted to a big stompy robot game (Adeptus Titanicus) but couldn't afford to produce more than a single model in plastic, so they created the civil war so they could just make do with a single model cast in different colours.

There were traitors at Teutoburg?

Clever of GW to do that.

The problem with the 'included to allow players to design their own first founding legions' theory is that it doesn't make any sense.

They wouldn't have been removed from all Imperial records if they were still running around the Galaxy causing issues with record keeping by virtue of, you know, existing...

 insaniak wrote:
The problem with the 'included to allow players to design their own first founding legions' theory is that it doesn't make any sense.

They wouldn't have been removed from all Imperial records if they were still running around the Galaxy causing issues with record keeping by virtue of, you know, existing...

But were they MIA or just not mentioned?

Maximus Bitch wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
The problem with the 'included to allow players to design their own first founding legions' theory is that it doesn't make any sense.

They wouldn't have been removed from all Imperial records if they were still running around the Galaxy causing issues with record keeping by virtue of, you know, existing...

But were they MIA or just not mentioned?

At least one is hinted to being executed by the Space Wolves. During their pursuit of the Thousand Sons, it was mentioned that this was not the first time the Wolves were unleashed on another Legion leaving us to believe that at least one of the Legions was exterminated by the Space Wolves and then expunged from Imperial record. They committed such a heinous crime that it came down to that.

 Envihon wrote:

Maximus Bitch wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
The problem with the 'included to allow players to design their own first founding legions' theory is that it doesn't make any sense.

They wouldn't have been removed from all Imperial records if they were still running around the Galaxy causing issues with record keeping by virtue of, you know, existing...

But were they MIA or just not mentioned?

At least one is hinted to being executed by the Space Wolves. During their pursuit of the Thousand Sons, it was mentioned that this was not the first time the Wolves were unleashed on another Legion leaving us to believe that at least one of the Legions was exterminated by the Space Wolves and then expunged from Imperial record. They committed such a heinous crime that it came down to that.

Gashrog mentioned that it was in 2nd ed, sometime before the BL novels.

Maximus Bitch wrote:
There were traitors at Teutoburg?

The Germanic chieftain the Romans had allied with betrayed them, yes. IIRC he was providing diplomacy and scouting and assured the Romans no one was about to attack them. Then they were attacked and annihilated.

According to Priestly, the two missing Legions got pwned and shamed, hence their numbers were dropped.

His full explanation is a little more cool than that. According to him, back in the days of the Roman Legions, if a legion did something particularly bad/heinous, they would carry the shame of that forever. It was written down as part of their history. Nothing was covered up. If a shamed legion later did something incredibly brave or valorous, they could be "redeemed" by having their records struck from history entirley. It would be as if they never existed. That way, while the good deed would not get noted, the legion's original shame would also be erased.

Priestly hinted that this is what happened to the two missing legions. I like to think they either deliberately turned traitor during the Heresy or were tricked into it and then later realised what they had done and sacrificed themselves in some way to make up for it.

It's "canonically" confirmed, at least for the BL Horus Heresy series, that the legions were wiped from the record long before the Horus Heresy broke out (but after many, but not all, primarchs were discovered. Sanguinus was there for it but Corax was not, IIRC)

TiamatRoar wrote:
It's "canonically" confirmed, at least for the BL Horus Heresy series, that the legions were wiped from the record long before the Horus Heresy broke out (but after many, but not all, primarchs were discovered. Sanguinus was there for it but Corax was not, IIRC)

Yeah, that's the more recent version thanks to the novels. The older fluff (at least from 2nd ed onwards) had the suggestion that they had taken part in the Heresy, probably on Horus' side. Which led to the common theory that they were Traitors who were completely wiped out, thus allowing them to be safely expunged from all records.

The Horus Heresy books changed all of that by having them already long gone by the time the Heresy started, with the suggestion by Sanguinius in whichever book that was that in at least one case it had something to do with mutation in the geneseed.

 Envihon wrote:

Maximus Bitch wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
The problem with the 'included to allow players to design their own first founding legions' theory is that it doesn't make any sense.

They wouldn't have been removed from all Imperial records if they were still running around the Galaxy causing issues with record keeping by virtue of, you know, existing...

But were they MIA or just not mentioned?

At least one is hinted to being executed by the Space Wolves. During their pursuit of the Thousand Sons, it was mentioned that this was not the first time the Wolves were unleashed on another Legion leaving us to believe that at least one of the Legions was exterminated by the Space Wolves and then expunged from Imperial record. They committed such a heinous crime that it came down to that.

Yeah... but what sort of act could they have done that was heinous enough to deserve that, compared to what the World Eaters, Night Lords, Thousand Sons, and Death Guard were already doing?

I'm pretty sure that if they linked up with Chaos, the Emperor would have realized he messed up by not telling his other Primarchs about Chaos.

This is a point that is often confused by 40K fans.

The idea that there were 1000 Chapters was included so that players could make their own Space Marine Chapters up.

Gashrog wrote:Back in 1st edition there were three missing legions, but there was no mystery involved: they were the Isstvan V loyalists, who were struck from Imperial records due to their annihilation, presumably as a nod to the three Roman legions who suffered a similar fate after being betrayed and massacred by their erstwhile allies in the Teutoberg Forest. GW allowed people to make up their own first founding legions at the time by simply not printing a complete list.

Partially correct.

Space Marine Legions did not appear in the fluff until 2nd Edition, and they were always deleted. The Marines destroyed at Istvaan V in the original Space Marine (Epic) rulebook were defined as Chapters (and were not listed by name). And the later version of the Istvaan V massacre in the Slaves to Darkness book changed that story to them being massacred, but a handful escaping with some geneseed (and thus the "modern" version where the Sallies, IH and RG were at Istvaan but survived was born).

The missing Legions were never intended to be a space for players to create their own. They were simply a mysterious bit of the Heresy, which at the time, was something that happened 10,000 years prior and nobody knew much of anything about anymore.

That said, there was no proscription against deciding what happened to the missing Legions either. Old school 40K fluff wasn't really about telling you what wasn't possible. But they were also never intentionally included so you'd have room to make up your own Legion.

Legions were irrelevant to the game/fluff in 2nd Edition anyway. Even if your Marines were from the Missing Legion, they'd just be one of the 1000 Chapters. The Horus Heresy wasn't a game setting, so you'd never be using a "Legion" of Space Marines anyway.

 EmpNortonII wrote:

 Envihon wrote:

Maximus Bitch wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
The problem with the 'included to allow players to design their own first founding legions' theory is that it doesn't make any sense.

They wouldn't have been removed from all Imperial records if they were still running around the Galaxy causing issues with record keeping by virtue of, you know, existing...

But were they MIA or just not mentioned?

At least one is hinted to being executed by the Space Wolves. During their pursuit of the Thousand Sons, it was mentioned that this was not the first time the Wolves were unleashed on another Legion leaving us to believe that at least one of the Legions was exterminated by the Space Wolves and then expunged from Imperial record. They committed such a heinous crime that it came down to that.

Yeah... but what sort of act could they have done that was heinous enough to deserve that, compared to what the World Eaters, Night Lords, Thousand Sons, and Death Guard were already doing?

I'm pretty sure that if they linked up with Chaos, the Emperor would have realized he messed up by not telling his other Primarchs about Chaos.

The first Legion to be expunged, the 2nd Legion presumably because it is mentioned that it happened after the Dark Angels were created, had a totally botched creation. Something happened and only Malcador and the Emperor know exactly what but the entire Legion was scrapped and then moved onto the the 3rd Legion, the Emperor's Children . After the Dark Angels were done and the Emperor saw them he got excited about how they came out so he tried something new with the 2nd Legion that doomed them to non-existence. Malcador briefly mentions this in The Sigilite.

The fate of the 11th Legion is mentioned in Thousand Sons and Prospero Burns when it is mentioned that this is the second time the Wolves have been called for this duty. Originally, the Wolves were only called in to apprehend the Magnus and his Legion but Horus tells them to execute them. The reason for this was just the infraction of disobeying the Council of Nikea so the Thousand Sons "minor" crime was just using their psychic powers that the Emperor gave to them. If this was enough to call the Wolves in, it isn't hard to imagine what the 11th did for it. Remember, this was before the Heresy was even known so who knows what would of happened to Horus and his Legion if it would of been an isolated incident.

An explanation for why the 11th got deleted from record is probably because the Wolves totally annihilated most of them for their infraction leaving the loyal ones to be dispensed into the Ultramarines. So because of the totality of the Wolves job, it made it easier for them to delete the records while the Traitor Legions are still out there along with their Primarchs. They were more successful in hiding their infraction than they could be trying to hide the Chaos Legions that are still in existence.

well, all this fluff came much later with the BL novels, I would like to know the origins

Ehm, there's not much to it. There were 2 "missing legions". That's it. They were called either the missing legions or the lost legions, and there were 2 of them. Then they fleshed out the Horus Heresy further, and the other legions, but two remained unnamed and unremarked.

Then the BL novels came about and provided some clues regarding them, but that's pretty much all that can be said about them.

There is almost zero published information about them other than they were once a thing, and are now no longer a thing.

Some of the current TBL authors have gone so far as to confirm there actually is no lore about them (even kept in secret at GW), other than they don't exist anymore and nobody (in universe) talks about it.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
There is almost zero published information about them other than they were once a thing, and are now no longer a thing.

Some of the current TBL authors have gone so far as to confirm there actually is no lore about them (even kept in secret at GW), other than they don't exist anymore and nobody (in universe) talks about it.

Wasn't Sanguinius reprimanded for mentioning it?

 Envihon wrote:
The reason for this was just the infraction of disobeying the Council of Nikea so the Thousand Sons "minor" crime was just using their psychic powers that the Emperor gave to them. If this was enough to call the Wolves in, it isn't hard to imagine what the 11th did for it. Remember, this was before the Heresy was even known so who knows what would of happened to Horus and his Legion if it would of been an isolated incident.

It was more than just using psychic powers. He completely destroyed any hope that Mankind would master the webway, and left an unsealable tear in the warp right in the middle of the Emperor's Palace.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:

Space Marine Legions did not appear in the fluff until 2nd Edition, and they were always deleted. The Marines destroyed at Istvaan V in the original Space Marine (Epic) rulebook were defined as Chapters (and were not listed by name).

A minor terminological change as Space Marine defined Heresy era Chapters as being tens of thousands of marines strong.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:

And the later version of the Istvaan V massacre in the Slaves to Darkness book changed that story to them being massacred, but a handful escaping with some geneseed (and thus the "modern" version where the Sallies, IH and RG were at Istvaan but survived was born).

Actually you have that backward. Slaves to Darkness came out in 1988, Space Marine in 1989.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
The missing Legions were never intended to be a space for players to create their own. They were simply a mysterious bit of the Heresy, which at the time, was something that happened 10,000 years prior and nobody knew much of anything about anymore.

Dan Abnett said in one of the Black Library videos that they were very lucky with being able to say anything about the missing legions because they'd long been left blank for the fans to fill in. Seems a bit strange to leave a hole for players to make up stories but not to use those stories for their models.

Abnett's confused. It wouldn't be the first time a TBL author goofed.

The Legions never existed in the 40K game until Forgeworld made a game for it. There were no "Legions" for players to make up stories for. Hence the "Missing Legions" were irrelevant to 40K, so why would they be included so you could make your Space Marines the missing one of? They would't. Like I said. Nothing's to say that you couldn't do that. But you're conflating ability, with purpose. That wasn't their purpose in the game's fluff. And it was never stated to be that way, whereas the 1000 Chapters were explicitly stated to have been left unnamed so players could create their own chapters.

And what Abnett says makes no sense, given that TBL's version of the Horus Heresy completely obliterates any fan-made "Missing Legions" because it removes them entirely from the story of the Heresy and beyond.

Where as perhaps you could "fanonize" your Missing Legion under Priestley's old interpretation of "Nobody knows what happened to them, they probably sided with Horus and later switched back", the Missing Legions are now unequivocably gone, long before the Heresy even began. The only place where the "Missing Legions" could still be made up by the players is in Forgeworld's Horus Heresy game, and well, that game didn't exist in 1992/93 when the concept of Missing Legions was introduced.

You are right about me having it reverse. Which of course makes the whole thing even more wonky. Because SoD says the 5 Marines escaped and the destroyed chapters were reconstituted, and then the next year's Space Marine says the chapters were destroyed and purged from records.

Either way, the only place where it is expicitly stated that the ambiguity is there for players to create their own is Chapters, not Legions.

Ahhh Yes. Where did you get that piece of print from? I noticed 2 points of question to raise. First of all, Horus' legion had 3 names overall. His legion started as the Lunar Wolves. They were renamed the Sons of Horus after the Emporer named Horus as Warmaster. They were then renamed the Black Legion by Abbaddon after Horus's fall in combat, at the climax of the Horus Heresy.

The other point that I would like to bring up as the Dark Angels main color is black according to the right side list. I will give an exhalt for the first person to explain this fact correctly.

SYKOJAK wrote:
Ahhh Yes. Where did you get that piece of print from? I noticed 2 points of question to raise. First of all, Horus' legion had 3 names overall. His legion started as the Lunar Wolves. They were renamed the Sons of Horus after the Emporer named Horus as Warmaster. They were then renamed the Black Legion by Abbaddon after Horus's fall in combat, at the climax of the Horus Heresy.

The other point that I would like to bring up as the Dark Angels main color is black according to the right side list. I will give an exhalt for the first person to explain this fact correctly.

That chart seems to relate to the Dark Angels Pre-Heresy colors which were indeed Black. It was sometime after the Betrayal that the Dark Angels changed their armor from Black to Green.

SYKOJAK wrote:
The other point that I would like to bring up as the Dark Angels main color is black according to the right side list. I will give an exhalt for the first person to explain this fact correctly.

That snippet would appear to be from one of the Rogue Trader-era books. Dark Angels at that point wore black.

They were changed to green when Space Marine was released, as black looked a little rubbish at 6mm scale. In second ed, the 40K Dark Angels were similarly changed to green to match, and the story of their armour colour changing after the Heresy added in to explain the change.