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So I've been thinking about the two missing primarchs lately and ways to write about them. As GW begins filling the empty spaces of the crusades, and even before the crusade era, it becomes more difficult to fit our own stories into universe. That's not to say it hasn't been done, I've seen a few different writers and artist take a stab at it with promising results. Other than these individuals though, few have done so effectively. So I began thinking about changing where they are in the timeline and what happened to them.

What if they were made part of the Horus Heresy?

Despite how horrible the Horus Heresy is meant to be, no legion was destroyed. Yes, primarchs died and somes legiones were nearly eradicated, but they still remain in the 40k setting in strong numbers. I figure it would add a note of tragedy to see two legiones, their primarch and their homewolrd completely annihilated. Rather than missing, they have become forgotten amidst the chaos and erosion of time. The Horus Heresy would largely stay the same and the characters would mostly play the same parts. Ideally, each of the missing primarchs would choose a different side and be nearly or completely destroyed before Horus ever reaches Terra. I have a few ideas for the two pirmarchs and their legiones and I think I could write a few small stories that would be interesting.

My question is if this is a good idea or just a clumsy attempt to shoehorn my own ideas into an existing plot?

I don't really get what you're trying to do. Are you trying to rewrite these Legion's "story" ? Because we already know that they are long gone by the time of the Heresy.

Yes that's his goal. Rewrite fluff so that rather than going out pre-HH they would be annihilated during it.

I think that the mystery afforded by the whole ‘we don’t talk about them’ vibe from both sides of the heresy adds more to the overall plot than if they had been explicitly killed off during the war.

At least one of the legions turned againgst humanity for some reason.

The other probably suffered some major form of mutation and was wiped.


Other than that I'd don't know how you could possibly ret-con them in since they were out by the heresy.

 Eihnlazer wrote:
At least one of the legions turned againgst humanity for some reason.

The other probably suffered some major form of mutation and was wiped.


Other than that I'd don't know how you could possibly ret-con them in since they were out by the heresy.

Ummm retconning means altering the story. That's precisely how you get them in HH. When you retcon things anything goes. Whole point then is that you aren't restricted with what WAS written about them.

So this becomes a debate of whether or not to give retconning a foothold here. If you play by that logic, the whole story of the heresy could easily play out differently.

 Aetare wrote:
So this becomes a debate of whether or not to give retconning a foothold here. If you play by that logic, the whole story of the heresy could easily play out differently.

Eh whole point of 40k is that you can do with it what you want. If he has more fun that way that's his right. The day players are required to follow GW's word like lemmings and not deviate is the day 40k dies.

Nah, they didn't even make the initial cut.
One landed on an Ork world.
The other landed on a S(redacted) world.

You know, maybe focusing more on the lost legion than the Primarch might work better in your favor.

Personally, I'd suggest having one of the lost Primarch's say 'No, I'm not journey your genocidal Crusade across the galaxy'. He could be someone like Curze, who wasn't exactly bat-sh*t but knew exactly what this Crusade was.
Though his appearance would be brief, you should build off that. Make him as large as Astarte's, not those colossal Primarch's like Angron and friends. Maybe he had an Empire built around commerce, that wasn't ruled by a single-man like Dorn's or Robute... Food for thought!

If you were to tell a story focus primarily on the Legion, how they are being sent on suicidal campaigns. They're the progeny of a son who denounced his father, thus loathed by their kinsmen.
Maybe Primarch's like Perturabo and Robute would absorb them into their own legions and the Astarte's leading them would fight tooth and nail against that happening. Really ramp up the drama.

See all those idea's up there, that's a decent way to kick things off without wiggling into the already existing plot.

 Aetare wrote:
So this becomes a debate of whether or not to give retconning a foothold here. If you play by that logic, the whole story of the heresy could easily play out differently.

To be fair, retconning has been so prevalent in w40k that it's pretty much become a feature of the fluff.

"Were Orks always fungal based lifeforms?"

"No, The Imperium figured that facet out around 1995..."

"Wait, there were Thunder Warriors that survived the masscare?"

"Yeah. The Imperium just didn't know about them before last year"

"So About those Utlramarines..."

"Wait. Which Ultramarine history do you subscribe to?"

This is the only game where players actually treat the fluff as secondhand, possibly edited, propaganda rather than historical fact.

Which is actually pretty cool when you think about it.

Nah you guys are right. I do the same in terms of filling in the gaps sometimes, but re-writing heavily covered history just seemed a bit much and took away from the mystique of the lost legions.

It's true that its a trigger that can only be pulled once. Once GW reveals the 2 lost legions they will officially be out of hidden legions. I'm pretty certain GW is holding them in reserves for a stormy day, just like the primarchs in 40k.

You really can't have either hidden primarch in HH without complicating the hell out of the 40k timeline up until now. You could introduce them to the new 40k timeline, but only after all the primaris and custodes agnst dies down.

Fat Necron wrote:
You know, maybe focusing more on the lost legion than the Primarch might work better in your favor.

Personally, I'd suggest having one of the lost Primarch's say 'No, I'm not journey your genocidal Crusade across the galaxy'. He could be someone like Curze, who wasn't exactly bat-sh*t but knew exactly what this Crusade was.
Though his appearance would be brief, you should build off that. Make him as large as Astarte's, not those colossal Primarch's like Angron and friends. Maybe he had an Empire built around commerce, that wasn't ruled by a single-man like Dorn's or Robute... Food for thought!

If you were to tell a story focus primarily on the Legion, how they are being sent on suicidal campaigns. They're the progeny of a son who denounced his father, thus loathed by their kinsmen.
Maybe Primarch's like Perturabo and Robute would absorb them into their own legions and the Astarte's leading them would fight tooth and nail against that happening. Really ramp up the drama.

See all those idea's up there, that's a decent way to kick things off without wiggling into the already existing plot.

That's actually pretty close to some of the ideas I had. He and his legion would be the trope of space privateers and the gentleman thief. The primarch would be running a space faring plutocracy made up of a number of systems. In my vision he would relent and join the emperor but would quickly become rebellious similar to Kurze and eventually join Horus in the hopes of gaining his autonomy. This would quickly turn against him as his past empire crumbles to chaos for... some reason. But perhaps you're right and I should leave the missing primarchs where they are.

And just to clarify to others. I'm not looking for GW to retcon anything. I just want to know if the ideas in my head are worth writing about or just awkward...

I am personally, revising/re-retconning my Tomb Kings Legion's history to accommodate as much fluff as possible, and yet allow for survivors of past continuities, such as the Female Marine Chapters, and others from older sources to remain.

The caveat I am taking was that there were 49 or 50 Primarchs (original Space Marines had no such thing as Primarchs or Geneseed, BTW) instead of 20.
What happened to these other 30 Primarchs? Not only were they annihilated during the early part of the Heresy, all memory of them were wiped from Memory, by the Emperor himself. The 2 Lost Legions his subjects were allowed to remember as warnings, but all evidence, even memory, was eradicated regarding these 30.
These 30 were the most psychically potent of the Primarchs. Only a few survived and their existence is not known to the Emperor.

The original idea of the missing legions was so that people could invent their own stories for their armies, it wasn't meant to be a great mystery, that came later. So 40k is retcon on top of retcon. Go for it. You could write it so that the reason they were destroyed added to the mystery.

I like to set my stories all in obscure bits of the universe and history so it doesn't interfere with established fluff and I like the new advanced setting, anything goes really. A blank canvas.

 ChargerIIC wrote:

 Aetare wrote:
So this becomes a debate of whether or not to give retconning a foothold here. If you play by that logic, the whole story of the heresy could easily play out differently.

To be fair, retconning has been so prevalent in w40k that it's pretty much become a feature of the fluff.

"Were Orks always fungal based lifeforms?"

"No, The Imperium figured that facet out around 1995..."

"Wait, there were Thunder Warriors that survived the masscare?"

"Yeah. The Imperium just didn't know about them before last year"

"So About those Utlramarines..."

"Wait. Which Ultramarine history do you subscribe to?"

This is the only game where players actually treat the fluff as secondhand, possibly edited, propaganda rather than historical fact.

Which is actually pretty cool when you think about it.

not true at all. 40k is mostly unique in that we conclude that without being specificly told yes, but it's pretty common for sourcebooks for various games to be written in an in character standpoint, one of my favorite sourcebooks for any game is proably the old Battletech Comstar sorucebook, because you occasionally ahd the data (which was written BY COMSTAR) interrupted by the word of blake splinter faction who'd be all like "well ACTUALLY they're lying and THIS is the truth" and insider info from reading the novels would let you know both sides lied and both sides told the truth eneugh that you could never be sure what the REAL history was

 ChargerIIC wrote:

 Aetare wrote:

This is the only game where players actually treat the fluff as secondhand, possibly edited, propaganda rather than historical fact.

I have never treated the fluff as propaganda or secondhand. I read some unhappy players that don't want Space Marines chapter to work with 1000 marines treat it like that, but that's all.

BrianDavion wrote:

 ChargerIIC wrote:

 Aetare wrote:
So this becomes a debate of whether or not to give retconning a foothold here. If you play by that logic, the whole story of the heresy could easily play out differently.

To be fair, retconning has been so prevalent in w40k that it's pretty much become a feature of the fluff.

"Were Orks always fungal based lifeforms?"

"No, The Imperium figured that facet out around 1995..."

"Wait, there were Thunder Warriors that survived the masscare?"

"Yeah. The Imperium just didn't know about them before last year"

"So About those Utlramarines..."

"Wait. Which Ultramarine history do you subscribe to?"

This is the only game where players actually treat the fluff as secondhand, possibly edited, propaganda rather than historical fact.

Which is actually pretty cool when you think about it.

not true at all. 40k is mostly unique in that we conclude that without being specifically told yes, but it's pretty common for sourcebooks for various games to be written in an in character standpoint, one of my favorite sourcebooks for any game is proably the old Battletech Comstar sourcebook, because you occasionally had the data (which was written BY COMSTAR) interrupted by the word of blake splinter faction who'd be all like "well ACTUALLY they're lying and THIS is the truth" and insider info from reading the novels would let you know both sides lied and both sides told the truth enough that you could never be sure what the REAL history was

*looks up from his codex defining genestealers as separate from tyranids*

*watches khornate orks fight with genestealer orks*

*Is struck down by a half-eldar librarian and his friend, Obi-Wan sherlock*

*Squats mourn his corpse*

*Space Marines change their average height again as the fifth chaos god goes back to being rumor*

I liked BT's fiction, but most of the uncertainty was purposeful. for better or worse, a lot of the comstar stuff was cleaned up in MWDA. 40k has constantly evolved and has needed to retcon things a few dozen times. Their defense against this has been the 'rumors and conspiracies'

 ChargerIIC wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 ChargerIIC wrote:

 Aetare wrote:
So this becomes a debate of whether or not to give retconning a foothold here. If you play by that logic, the whole story of the heresy could easily play out differently.

To be fair, retconning has been so prevalent in w40k that it's pretty much become a feature of the fluff.

"Were Orks always fungal based lifeforms?"

"No, The Imperium figured that facet out around 1995..."

"Wait, there were Thunder Warriors that survived the masscare?"

"Yeah. The Imperium just didn't know about them before last year"

"So About those Utlramarines..."

"Wait. Which Ultramarine history do you subscribe to?"

This is the only game where players actually treat the fluff as secondhand, possibly edited, propaganda rather than historical fact.

Which is actually pretty cool when you think about it.

not true at all. 40k is mostly unique in that we conclude that without being specifically told yes, but it's pretty common for sourcebooks for various games to be written in an in character standpoint, one of my favorite sourcebooks for any game is proably the old Battletech Comstar sourcebook, because you occasionally had the data (which was written BY COMSTAR) interrupted by the word of blake splinter faction who'd be all like "well ACTUALLY they're lying and THIS is the truth" and insider info from reading the novels would let you know both sides lied and both sides told the truth enough that you could never be sure what the REAL history was

*looks up from his codex defining genestealers as separate from tyranids*

*watches khornate orks fight with genestealer orks*

*Is struck down by a half-eldar librarian and his friend, Obi-Wan sherlock*

*Squats mourn his corpse*

*Space Marines change their average height again as the fifth chaos god goes back to being rumor*

I liked BT's fiction, but most of the uncertainty was purposeful. for better or worse, a lot of the comstar stuff was cleaned up in MWDA. 40k has constantly evolved and has needed to retcon things a few dozen times. Their defense against this has been the 'rumors and conspiracies'

if by cleaned up you mean the word of blake was turned into a cartoonish villian...

 ChargerIIC wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 ChargerIIC wrote:

 Aetare wrote:
So this becomes a debate of whether or not to give retconning a foothold here. If you play by that logic, the whole story of the heresy could easily play out differently.

To be fair, retconning has been so prevalent in w40k that it's pretty much become a feature of the fluff.

"Were Orks always fungal based lifeforms?"

"No, The Imperium figured that facet out around 1995..."

"Wait, there were Thunder Warriors that survived the masscare?"

"Yeah. The Imperium just didn't know about them before last year"

"So About those Utlramarines..."

"Wait. Which Ultramarine history do you subscribe to?"

This is the only game where players actually treat the fluff as secondhand, possibly edited, propaganda rather than historical fact.

Which is actually pretty cool when you think about it.

not true at all. 40k is mostly unique in that we conclude that without being specifically told yes, but it's pretty common for sourcebooks for various games to be written in an in character standpoint, one of my favorite sourcebooks for any game is proably the old Battletech Comstar sourcebook, because you occasionally had the data (which was written BY COMSTAR) interrupted by the word of blake splinter faction who'd be all like "well ACTUALLY they're lying and THIS is the truth" and insider info from reading the novels would let you know both sides lied and both sides told the truth enough that you could never be sure what the REAL history was

*looks up from his codex defining genestealers as separate from tyranids*

*watches khornate orks fight with genestealer orks*

*Is struck down by a half-eldar librarian and his friend, Obi-Wan sherlock*

*Squats mourn his corpse*

*Space Marines change their average height again as the fifth chaos god goes back to being rumor*

I liked BT's fiction, but most of the uncertainty was purposeful. for better or worse, a lot of the comstar stuff was cleaned up in MWDA. 40k has constantly evolved and has needed to retcon things a few dozen times. Their defense against this has been the 'rumors and conspiracies'

^^^this^^^

BrianDavion wrote:


if by cleaned up you mean the word of blake was turned into a cartoonish villian...

I know, right? They went from mysterious, to terrorists, to mad anime scientists, to mustache twirling villains. Poor BT, things really went to hell for a while there. Even Jordan Wiesman clearly tries to start all his new IP attempts in 3025 or 3050. He won't touch that stuff and he helped write it.

 ChargerIIC wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:


if by cleaned up you mean the word of blake was turned into a cartoonish villian...

I know, right? They went from mysterious, to terrorists, to mad anime scientists, to mustache twirling villains. Poor BT, things really went to hell for a while there. Even Jordan Wiesman clearly tries to start all his new IP attempts in 3025 or 3050. He won't touch that stuff and he helped write it.

In fairness I think weissman wanted to go back to the 3025 feel with MWDA, but pretty much the entire Battletech writing staff has an obsession with "massive map changing war" which would be fine if they could do it in a balanced realistic way instead of "LOL the draconious combine conquers half the federated suns while fighting a civil war because insane leader lol"