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Hi,
I'm new here, primarily I have red the Heresy novels and only a few W40k books, so I turn to the wisdom of Dakka forums because I'm curious if there is any W40k novel (NOT Heresy) with an actual, real Primarch taking any role in it? Cloned Horuses and Daemon Primarchs does not count. BTW which w40k novel has its story set at the earliest stage?
thanks

no there isn't. the Primarchs in 40k are all dead (or "missing") until the Horus Heresy novels came out, the Primarchs where basicly "ancient history and myth"

Vulkan appears in The Beast Arises series. Though chronologically it's closer in time to the Horus Heresy than the "current" Imperium.
Not including things like occasional Necron flash backs, Asurmen: Hand of Asuryan half takes place in a pre-fall/fall Eldar Empire and so is pretty early.

The Primarchs series is pre Heresy. The first novel, about Guilliman, is set before Ullanor, I think.

Wow! Thanks for the insight, Animus. Although by "early" I meant between 30k and 40k, it never had occurred to me there were actually novels about other races as well... I was avoiding 40k material for a long time because I was reading the HH stuff, so I considered anything 40k to be possible spoiler. Recently I reached the last available Heresy novel, though, so I was thinking about delving a bit into the 40k universe. So, after spending just half an hour on the warhammer wiki had spoiled basically all the major events of the HH yet to come (including the fates of the primarchs and the outcome of the battle for Terra), I decided I would start reading 40k novels. But there are so many of them, and they don't seem to follow any chronological order, so I'm a bit puzzled. Are there any 40k novels that are, short of, bridging the gap between the HH novels and the 40k universe by, like, taking place at a very early stage of the post-heresy imperium?

Sir Samuel Buca - the Primarch sereies are HH material, as far as I know. I am more curious about novels that are genuinely 40k (eg. written before the HH stuff) but are as close to the HH timeline as possible. To my knowledge some Primarchs outlived the heresy by quite a few centuries, though in the 40k timeline (as rumors has it) the only living primarchs not lost, dead or ascended are Lion El'Johnson (in stasis) and one of the Alpharius Omegon twins.

kyliansunn wrote:
Wow! Thanks for the insight, Animus. Although by "early" I meant between 30k and 40k, it never had occurred to me there were actually novels about other races as well... I was avoiding 40k material for a long time because I was reading the HH stuff, so I considered anything 40k to be possible spoiler. Recently I reached the last available Heresy novel, though, so I was thinking about delving a bit into the 40k universe. So, after spending just half an hour on the warhammer wiki had spoiled basically all the major events of the HH yet to come (including the fates of the primarchs and the outcome of the battle for Terra), I decided I would start reading 40k novels. But there are so many of them, and they don't seem to follow any chronological order, so I'm a bit puzzled. Are there any 40k novels that are, short of, bridging the gap between the HH novels and the 40k universe by, like, taking place at a very early stage of the post-heresy imperium?

Sir Samuel Buca - the Primarch sereies are HH material, as far as I know. I am more curious about novels that are genuinely 40k (eg. written before the HH stuff) but are as close to the HH timeline as possible. To my knowledge some Primarchs outlived the heresy by quite a few centuries, though in the 40k timeline (as rumors has it) the only living primarchs not lost, dead or ascended are Lion El'Johnson (in stasis) and one of the Alpharius Omegon twins.

The Horus Heresy is odd in that for the average 40k fan, the outcome, as well as many famous events, have been known for decades. Thus what would be considered spoilers for the series, is usually the starting point for understanding 40k lore.

As for your question, there are a few novels that immediately jump to mind.
Talon of Horus, the first book in the Black Legion series, is set only a few hundred years after the Heresy. It deals with founding members of the Black Legion.
Next is Ahriman: Exile, the first book in the Ahriman series, is set a bit further on from Talon of Horus. It deals with Ahriman's rise to power.
Next is The Beast Arises, a twelve book series, set approximately 1,500 years after the heresy, when the Imperium has already forgotten about the heresy and believe themselves to be more or less at peace.

I recommend all three series.

Now, it's important to understand the scale of the 40k universe. Unlike the Heresy, there is no absolute chronology. There are individual series that cover a set of related events, but those can be hundreds of years and thousands of light years apart from one another. Very rarely, a reference from one series or novel is found in another, usually if the two were by the same author, but usually the setting is so vastly large that cataclysmic events of one sector, may go completely unheard of just one sector over, let alone in a different segmentum.

the one referance from one novel by another author I can recall is "Emperor's gift" makes a referance to Ravenor

I think its really funny how all the loyalist primarchs are dead or missing, and most of the ones that are missing are presumed to not be coming back, while some i think like 4 of the traitor primarchs, Mortarian and Magnus the Red definitly being 2 of them, are still "alive" so to speak, having achieved Daemon Princeship. While they dont usually ever venture of their Warp Worlds, they therotically could if they still wanted to.

Ian Watson's Chaos Child, although a Heretic Tome, features Magnus the Red.

Ok, so no real, living Primarchs in w40k books, what about Daemon Price primarchs?

kyliansunn wrote:
Ok, so no real, living Primarchs in w40k books, what about Daemon Price primarchs?

Magnus makes some cameos and minor appearances in a few of the the Spacewolf Onimbus stories. Up till the HH series, the Primarch were just not written about by Black Library, traitor or loyalist.

barnowl wrote:
Magnus makes some cameos and minor appearances in a few of the the Spacewolf Onimbus stories. Up till the HH series, the Primarch were just not written about by Black Library, traitor or loyalist.

Well, thank you all for the answers... it still feels a bit strange to me, in HH primarchs seem to be playing such a vital part in the fate of the galaxy... so, all those information on 40kwiki regarding the fates of the primarchs - how they disappeared/ascended/died - are actually coming from rulebooks, codexes or other not (yet) novelized sources... but what do you think, if Black Library were to start writing the "endgame" scenario, would primarchs return/play an important role again?