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I've considered that the Primarchs were built to fulfill roles in the Imperium, but narrowing down those roles is tough with 18 of the suckers.

Some are more obvious than others, so let's get those out of the way:

- Magnus: Golden Throne, Astronomicon, casting off his physical body to live as he was meant to.

- The Khan: Either patrolling the human Webway or traveling to another galaxy.

- Russ: Maintaining the status quo through his beat to death title of Executioner and black and white moral compass.

- Guilliman: Colonization, population controls, Administratum.

- Alpharius: Intelligence/Security of the Imperium, much in the role the Inquisition now fill.

- Horus: Day to day ruling of the Imperium out among the stars as a mobile Regent. Mostly a political position.

- Sanguinius: Take the Emperor's place on Terra and rule in tandem with his brother Horus.

- Perturabo: Rebuild the worlds crushed by the Crusade.

- Fulgrim: Embellish and grow the cultures of the Imperium and spread them far and wide.

- The Lion: The absolute rule of law in the Imperium with the many and convoluted rules of the Administratum, IG, and Mechanicum united by one core standard.

- Dorn: Garrison the Eye of Terror and the outer reaches of the Imperium. Some argue this role for Perturabo, but in a perfect Imperium I would argue that Pert is allowed to create more than fortresses.

- Ferrus Manus: Creating the weapons of a new age to guard against the threats of Necron, Tyranid, etc.

- Vulkan: Build technologies for man to thrive and flourish.

- Curze: Penal system. It's a cop out, but I've got nothing.

- Corax: Helping engineer a more advanced biological future for mankind.

- Angron: Honestly, no one knows how he was before the nails. Due to the nature of the Warhounds before he came, I might relegate Angron to a form of Imperial Olympics committee where brotherly competition is encouraged and intensely played out.

- Mortarion: Quarantine protocols, safety measures, etc. Would likely work a lot with Corax and Guilliman. Again, a cop out because I have no legitimately GOOD idea for him.

- Lorgar: The traveling scholar half in the warp who, with Magnus, would regulate the education of the Imperium. That or he WAS made to worship the Emperor after he had gone away.





Tell me what you think the Primarchs were destined for in the aftermath of the Great Crusade. Let's assume the Emperor had more than the life of a soldier in mind for his sons.

- Magnus: The astronomicon was psychically tied to the emperor, it had nothing to do with the Golden Throne. The throne was to be used to power the human webway.

- The Khan: I got nothing. Agree.

- Russ: Agree

- Guilliman: Guilliman would have been sort of general secretary in the Imperium.

- Alpharius/Omegon: Intelligence/ top-secret operations.

- Horus: Perhaps. Got nothing else.

- Sanguinius: Maybe.

- Perturabo: Perturabo would have been best used as a general civil engineer.

- Fulgrim: Agree.

- The Lion: Got nothing.

- Dorn: Agree.

- Ferrus Manus: Agree.

- Vulkan: Perhaps.

- Curze: Got nothing better.

- Corax: Maybe.

- Angron: Angron would have had to be put down eventually.

- Mortarion: Nothing better in mind.

- Lorgar: The spreader of Imperial Truth.

Curze and Angron would have been quietly done away with. Both of them were too fethed up to function in society in a time of peace, especially Angron.

This, of course, assumes that the Great Crusade would ever actually end, which is a pretty big assumption. There's all kinds of Xeno threats out there, and the Necrons had not yet risen again to the galactic stage in that era.

More likely, the GC would be a perpetual endeavor, with the state of the Imperium not much different than it is now in the wake of the Heresy. It'd be a war fought on three fronts, the Imperium of Man against the Necrons, the Orks and the Tyranids... with occasional flare-ups against the Hrud, the Bhargest, the Rak'Gol and the Dark Eldar raiders from Commoragh.

It's good to know I could take hard guesses and do alright with a first pass. Still, any suggestions for Mortarion?

Mortarion.
Could he be tasking with anti genesteeler or other bio threats that pop up and never quite 100% exterminated like ork infestations. type operations?
Given deathguard are high immune to poison etc. Good close qauteters troops.

Curze is not quite suited for peace time work....unless his guys become specialists to punish rebellious worlds in total defiance.

Angron is going to have to be put down or the nails kill him...
Both ways world eaters are primarch less.

I tend to agree that the great crusade would never truely be over. there'd always be SOMETHING left to fight. SOME Primarchs may have chosen to retire to do something else. but I suspect a lot would continue to lead their forces until their luck ran out

BrianDavion wrote:
I tend to agree that the great crusade would never truely be over. there'd always be SOMETHING left to fight. SOME Primarchs may have chosen to retire to do something else. but I suspect a lot would continue to lead their forces until their luck ran out

I consider this the more obvious and boring possibility. It's actually the original con, if I'm not mistaken, that the crusade was to continue expanding.

The last 15 years or so have seen that turned around to where Horus dickered up the very end stages of the Great Crusade.

The only definite we have is that Magnus would power the Golden Throne.
I think Guilliman would have taken to running Ultramar as his own micro-Imperium, free to reign as he sees fit.

 Sir Samuel Buca wrote:
The only definite we have is that Magnus would power the Golden Throne.
I think Guilliman would have taken to running Ultramar as his own micro-Imperium, free to reign as he sees fit.

Not if the Emperor didnt permit it...

I'm sure Guilliman, with his talent for efficient leadership, would have been give larger parts of the Imperium to handle. Eventually maybe all of it. An administrator who has incredible knowledge about managing resources, and little need for sleep? He wouldn't have been asked to manage individual worlds but whole Segmentums. Any particular world (like Macragge) that he wanted to micromanage would have to come out of his sleep allowance.

Somehow I think many of them would have found it stifling to be stuck as the administrators and leaders in a peaceful Empire.

Hey, I like all of your suggestions. I think Curze might have filled the role of the Inquisition, and the Lion perhaps the function of leader of the High Lords of Terra--organizing the activities of the human military. (Or Horus could have done this, perhaps).

I posted a thread with a similar question a while back. I was interested in the "portion of the Emperor's character" the Primarchs possessed, but basically I was after the same thing as you are based on the Abnett quote--what was their intended purpose?

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/621979.page

I put down my ideas and some other poeple posited some interesting theories. Check it out--it was interesting reading.

In addition, I can't think of anything for Mortarion to do, really, other than perhaps help Dorn garrison the Eye of Terror defense? That makes sense to me.

And Angron--perhaps he would continue to lead that actual fighting forces (against Xeno threats ike Greenskins and Tyranids, for example; just basic "Smash 'em!" campaigns). Otherwise, I think we need to ask what he WOULD have been intended to do before the nails messed him up. It was suggested in my thread that his main "good" character trait was LOYALTY--to his fellow gladiators, etc. So perhaps he would have been intended to help run the military? Create bonds between the (now disbanded?) legions as a peacekeeping force? It's difficult to say for sure because he was so clearly messed up by the Nails. Also disturbing in a Fascist way that when we was found the Emperor determined that he would not survive indefinitely and that the Nails could not be removed, and sent him out to battle anyway. Pretty Macchiavellian. So...the "he would have eventually been put down" theory does make sense in reality.

What do you think of my theory that they were "doubled up" in case some were lost? (Like Allied officers on D-Day Normandy beaches). Maybe they were redundant on purpose?

And...what about the missing two? How screwed up were they that their roles were eliminated from the original 20-Primarch master plan?

 pantheralegionnaire wrote:
Hey, I like all of your suggestions. I think Curze might have filled the role of the Inquisition, and the Lion perhaps the function of leader of the High Lords of Terra--organizing the activities of the human military. (Or Horus could have done this, perhaps).

I posted a thread with a similar question a while back. I was interested in the "portion of the Emperor's character" the Primarchs possessed, but basically I was after the same thing as you are based on the Abnett quote--what was their intended purpose?

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/621979.page

I put down my ideas and some other poeple posited some interesting theories. Check it out--it was interesting reading.

In addition, I can't think of anything for Mortarion to do, really, other than perhaps help Dorn garrison the Eye of Terror defense? That makes sense to me.

And Angron--perhaps he would continue to lead that actual fighting forces (against Xeno threats ike Greenskins and Tyranids, for example; just basic "Smash 'em!" campaigns). Otherwise, I think we need to ask what he WOULD have been intended to do before the nails messed him up. It was suggested in my thread that his main "good" character trait was LOYALTY--to his fellow gladiators, etc. So perhaps he would have been intended to help run the military? Create bonds between the (now disbanded?) legions as a peacekeeping force? It's difficult to say for sure because he was so clearly messed up by the Nails. Also disturbing in a Fascist way that when we was found the Emperor determined that he would not survive indefinitely and that the Nails could not be removed, and sent him out to battle anyway. Pretty Macchiavellian. So...the "he would have eventually been put down" theory does make sense in reality.

What do you think of my theory that they were "doubled up" in case some were lost? (Like Allied officers on D-Day Normandy beaches). Maybe they were redundant on purpose?

And...what about the missing two? How screwed up were they that their roles were eliminated from the original 20-Primarch master plan?

I believe the missing two harken back to Storm Wardens and the proto-Carcharodons.

One would function as the high-tech mystic of the future, using precognition and warp awareness to watch for any Chaos dickery while the other would roam outside our own galaxy.

This will only ever be a theory, sadly.

As far as doubling up, I actually think they've done a good job in the Heresy of making them unique enough to where I don't believe that. Ferrus and Vulkan both build, but for completely different reasons. Sanguinius and Angron can both berserk until there are no foes left, but they are perhaps one of the BEST signs of 'different reasons'.

If what you're saying is one of the missing 2 are the proto-Carcharodons, Extermination very heavily hints that the Carcharodons originated from the Raven Guard Nomad-Predation fleets that were sent to the fringes of the Galaxy when Corax assumed command of his legion.

 ImAGeek wrote:
If what you're saying is one of the missing 2 are the proto-Carcharodons, Extermination very heavily hints that the Carcharodons originated from the Raven Guard Nomad-Predation fleets that were sent to the fringes of the Galaxy when Corax assumed command of his legion.

If what you took away from that was an implication that a 23rd founding chapter of Raven Guard origins is a lost legion, then no.

You would be incorrect in that, my friend.

By 'proto' I mean first common ancestor. I meant literally what I wrote in that the first space marines tasked with exploring and maintaining the fringe could have been a lost legion and that the Carcharodons are the recent example of this role.

Yeah that makes more sense

I'll be more clear next time! My mistake.

Spetulhu wrote:
I'm sure Guilliman, with his talent for efficient leadership, would have been give larger parts of the Imperium to handle. Eventually maybe all of it. An administrator who has incredible knowledge about managing resources, and little need for sleep? He wouldn't have been asked to manage individual worlds but whole Segmentums. Any particular world (like Macragge) that he wanted to micromanage would have to come out of his sleep allowance.

Somehow I think many of them would have found it stifling to be stuck as the administrators and leaders in a peaceful Empire.

Guilliman was an administrator, not a leader. Even he knew that. Sanguinius and Horus were leaders. Guilliman would've been their quartermaster or secretary.

Mortarian and Corax are not easily pigeonholed into a post-crusade role. I could imagine them becoming scientists, though.

Angron would be disposed of like the Thunder Warriors, or else would simply continue crusading until he was killed in battle. The World Eaters could spend an eternity just trying to get the Ork problem under control.

Curze would also probably be disposed of, his legion was just out of control even before the heresy. He would need some serious psychotherapy before he could be successfully re-integrated into a peaceful Imperium (maybe that's possible, who knows?)

Khan might just continue crusading. He doesn't seem like one to settle down and administrate stuff. The webway idea is a good one - that would be the next frontier to tame, and he's a logical choice to explore and subdue the forces that inhabit it.

The OP seems right on about the other primarchs. Really, any of them would do an okay job in just about any sort of administrative/leadership position.

 ChazSexington wrote:

Spetulhu wrote:
I'm sure Guilliman, with his talent for efficient leadership, would have been give larger parts of the Imperium to handle. Eventually maybe all of it. An administrator who has incredible knowledge about managing resources, and little need for sleep? He wouldn't have been asked to manage individual worlds but whole Segmentums. Any particular world (like Macragge) that he wanted to micromanage would have to come out of his sleep allowance.

Somehow I think many of them would have found it stifling to be stuck as the administrators and leaders in a peaceful Empire.

Guilliman was an administrator, not a leader. Even he knew that. Sanguinius and Horus were leaders. Guilliman would've been their quartermaster or secretary.

Read unremembered Empire, good sir, and see just how wrong you are

Could send the World Eaters and Night Lords on a "special mission" outside the galaxy, lol. That would solve that problem.

Angron I would put in charge of training and induction of new astartes. They say that World Eaters training was the harshest and most difficult.

 dusara217 wrote:

 ChazSexington wrote:

Spetulhu wrote:
I'm sure Guilliman, with his talent for efficient leadership, would have been give larger parts of the Imperium to handle. Eventually maybe all of it. An administrator who has incredible knowledge about managing resources, and little need for sleep? He wouldn't have been asked to manage individual worlds but whole Segmentums. Any particular world (like Macragge) that he wanted to micromanage would have to come out of his sleep allowance.

Somehow I think many of them would have found it stifling to be stuck as the administrators and leaders in a peaceful Empire.

Guilliman was an administrator, not a leader. Even he knew that. Sanguinius and Horus were leaders. Guilliman would've been their quartermaster or secretary.

Read unremembered Empire, good sir, and see just how wrong you are

Why? Admittedly I need to reread it, but he knew from the start he couldn't be the leader of Imperium Secundus, and didn't want to be. He set it up, but he needed a figurehead.

 ImAGeek wrote:

 dusara217 wrote:

 ChazSexington wrote:

Spetulhu wrote:
I'm sure Guilliman, with his talent for efficient leadership, would have been give larger parts of the Imperium to handle. Eventually maybe all of it. An administrator who has incredible knowledge about managing resources, and little need for sleep? He wouldn't have been asked to manage individual worlds but whole Segmentums. Any particular world (like Macragge) that he wanted to micromanage would have to come out of his sleep allowance.

Somehow I think many of them would have found it stifling to be stuck as the administrators and leaders in a peaceful Empire.

Guilliman was an administrator, not a leader. Even he knew that. Sanguinius and Horus were leaders. Guilliman would've been their quartermaster or secretary.

Read unremembered Empire, good sir, and see just how wrong you are

Why? Admittedly I need to reread it, but he knew from the start he couldn't be the leader of Imperium Secundus, and didn't want to be. He set it up, but he needed a figurehead.

he didn't decide he needed to hand off control because no one would follow. he handed it off because he knew he needed to to ensure the purity of Imperium Secundus. if he built it and crowned himself he'd taint it to claims of the same kind of rebellous oppertunism as Horus.

Yeah, but I got the feeling he didn't want to lead it anyway. Everything written about him in the heresy gives him a more administrative feel than a leader feel.

Aedgar Perri wrote:
Angron I would put in charge of training and induction of new astartes. They say that World Eaters training was the harshest and most difficult.

Lol, it was also said to be the least efficient and most error-prone.

In fact, the low standards and quality of World Eaters recruits were a big reason behind the exacting measures of the Codex Astartes.

 ImAGeek wrote:

 dusara217 wrote:

 ChazSexington wrote:

Spetulhu wrote:
I'm sure Guilliman, with his talent for efficient leadership, would have been give larger parts of the Imperium to handle. Eventually maybe all of it. An administrator who has incredible knowledge about managing resources, and little need for sleep? He wouldn't have been asked to manage individual worlds but whole Segmentums. Any particular world (like Macragge) that he wanted to micromanage would have to come out of his sleep allowance.

Somehow I think many of them would have found it stifling to be stuck as the administrators and leaders in a peaceful Empire.

Guilliman was an administrator, not a leader. Even he knew that. Sanguinius and Horus were leaders. Guilliman would've been their quartermaster or secretary.

Read unremembered Empire, good sir, and see just how wrong you are

Why? Admittedly I need to reread it, but he knew from the start he couldn't be the leader of Imperium Secundus, and didn't want to be. He set it up, but he needed a figurehead.

He was clearly a fantastic leader, as evidenced in that book, and Know No Fear. He expertly manipulates the people and his Astartes, so as to maintain healthy morale and strong forces. He proves himself to be an adroit politician and an expert tactician and administrator. The only reason that he knew he couldn't be the figurehead was because he didn't want people to think he was being just as bad as Horus by carving out his own little pocket empire for self gain..

Short answer: Who knows

Slightly longer answer: I don't think there is a real answer. I'm not convinced some of the Primarchs were wrong in their assumption that the Emperor would simply do away with them after they conquered the galaxy.

To be honest, although I like your line of thinking, I believe most would have become warlords of their respective divided out regions of the galaxy (in their role of "region protectors"). There would always be a reason for soldiers, whether the increasing necron/tyranid threat etc.
Angron would probably have a planet very similar to his current daemon world, in the respect of massive gladatorial matches all the time.
Girlyman would run his region like he always did etc.

I think one thing we need to remember the emperor planned to raise the primarchs himself. would the night haunter have turned out a cynical madman if he were raised in the walls of the imperial palace. you have to bear in mind as well as their genetic nature they were all nurtured to end up the way they did. so many of the primarchs would have been very different people if not affected by their childhood.

I think Alpharius/Omegon would actually be the best at expanding into new galaxies, since they have a style of warfare that is usable in any situation.