Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

This little tidbit from Dark Imperium really caught my interest;

Basically, Cawl and Guilliman discuss "defrosting" the primaris marines created using the traitor legion's geneseed with Cawl stating that they're all good in the hood with no mutations etc.
Guilliman of course says NO, and i suppose we have to assume Cawl follows this order (even though he aint). But considering many of the primaris marines remember life before the heresy and some even remember seeing their respective primarchs in person this offers a massive wealth of potential both story and model wise.

My question is;

How would you explore/progress this awesome little revelation?

Process wrote:
This little tidbit from Dark Imperium really caught my interest;

Basically, Cawl and Guilliman discuss "defrosting" the primaris marines created using the traitor legion's geneseed with Cawl stating that they're all good in the hood with no mutations etc.
Guilliman of course says NO, and i suppose we have to assume Cawl follows this order (even though he aint). But considering many of the primaris marines remember life before the heresy and some even remember seeing their respective primarchs in person this offers a massive wealth of potential both story and model wise.

My question is;

How would you explore/progress this awesome little revelation?

It definitely has a lot of potential. To your point, and for those reading who might not have read the book, many of Cawl's "test subjects" were Astartes aspirants who were funneled into this secret project. Many of them are from the Heresy era and have simply been in stasis for ~10k years. From their point of view, they were told they would become Space Marines, were put under for the procedure... and then woke up 10,000 years later to what is probably a hellish nightmare where nothing makes sense. If they already had developed a sense of connection to their intended Legions, they'd possibly try to seek them out. Would not go well.

Alternately, I could see someone like Fabius Bile finding/stealing Cawl's research and making his own Primaris Marines. If Cawl can do it, Fabius should also be able to do it. He'd just have to be wary of Chaos taint, at least until the Marines are 'finished'. At that point, let the Chaos in.

I second Fabulous Bill getting involved. He's the most likely by far to be able to create some Chaos Primaris Marines.
Fingers crossed, an Emperor's Children codex is on the way with plastic Fulgrim. This would be the ideal time to advance this little plot thread.

-

 Kriswall wrote:
From their point of view, they were told they would become Space Marines, were put under for the procedure... and then woke up 10,000 years later to what is probably a hellish nightmare where nothing makes sense. If they already had developed a sense of connection to their intended Legions, they'd possibly try to seek them out. Would not go well.

This is what i found interesting;

The legions weren't genetically predisposed to rebel- it was through experience and in most cases loyalty to their Primarch, who they had fought alongside for many years that they chose to rebel.

So surely, even if a marine of traitor genestock was awoken as a Terran/Martian it would be highly unlikely they would renounce their loyalty to the Emperor even if they had developed a connection to their intended legion.

Alternatively, i could imagine many new primaris marines turning up beside their fellow chapters with no memory of their service before stasis- only to slowly discover the truth as they campaign against traitor marines, forming a schism between loyalist and traitor stock primaris- but not necessarily a rebellion

Process wrote:

 Kriswall wrote:
From their point of view, they were told they would become Space Marines, were put under for the procedure... and then woke up 10,000 years later to what is probably a hellish nightmare where nothing makes sense. If they already had developed a sense of connection to their intended Legions, they'd possibly try to seek them out. Would not go well.

This is what i found interesting;

The legions weren't genetically predisposed to rebel- it was through experience and in most cases loyalty to their Primarch, who they had fought alongside for many years that they chose to rebel.

So surely, even if a marine of traitor genestock was awoken as a Terran/Martian it would be highly unlikely they would renounce their loyalty to the Emperor even if they had developed a connection to their intended legion.

Alternatively, i could imagine many new primaris marines turning up beside their fellow chapters with no memory of their service before stasis- only to slowly discover the truth as they campaign against traitor marines, forming a schism between loyalist and traitor stock primaris- but not necessarily a rebellion

Yeah, you also have mental conditioning thrown into the mix. Let's say you 'abduct' a bunch of candidates from some death world where the Iron Warriors are seen as metal clad star gods. You then turn them into Primaris Marines and thrown in some good 'obey the Imperium of Man' conditioning. At their core, they probably still have a desire to join the Iron Warriors. Knowing intellectually that they are Traitors my not matter when much of your loyalty is conditioned and not learned.

Not read it myself but in Fabius Bile Clonelord



Imagine him being reunited with a legion of Primaris.

Fabulous bill is dieing, his clones are wearing out faster and faster, suddenly he find out about primaris, captures one, bam, he works out how to create a perfect clone without the disease and transfers his mind into the new body.

Primaris bile is born, new mini is released and the most fabulous apothecary in the universe is ready to rock and roll

 Formosa wrote:
Fabulous bill is dieing, his clones are wearing out faster and faster, suddenly he find out about primaris, captures one, bam, he works out how to create a perfect clone without the disease and transfers his mind into the new body.

Primaris bile is born, new mini is released and the most fabulous apothecary in the universe is ready to rock and roll

I'm not a Chaos player, but I'd be totally ok with this. Is he cloning replacement bodies for himself now and transferring his mind?

 Kriswall wrote:
Is he cloning replacement bodies for himself now and transferring his mind?

Dark Eldar do it and I'm pretty sure Fabbie learned a lot from them, so.....

-

The impression I got from Dark Imperium was that Cawl, whilst he may have had access to the traitor geneseed, and probably made some, I got the impression it was done after the Heresy, or at least during. Therefore, because they were hostile to the Imperium, I assumed that they wouldn't be actively giving Primaris recruits to Cawl.

I see a bit of Judda storyline potential with this, if anyone remembers Morton Judd and the Judge Kraken storyline from Dredd.

And we all know how well that turned out.

 Kriswall wrote:

 Formosa wrote:
Fabulous bill is dieing, his clones are wearing out faster and faster, suddenly he find out about primaris, captures one, bam, he works out how to create a perfect clone without the disease and transfers his mind into the new body.

Primaris bile is born, new mini is released and the most fabulous apothecary in the universe is ready to rock and roll

I'm not a Chaos player, but I'd be totally ok with this. Is he cloning replacement bodies for himself now and transferring his mind?

Yep, currently his body has the phage (i think its called) the disease that was wiping out the emperors children prior to Fulgrim being found, he clones himself and transfers his mind when the old one gets so riddled with disease its useless, but the process is breaking down faster and faster, which means eventually he will not be able to clone himself, thats where the primaris project could come in.

Bile calls himself the "Primogenitor", but once he gets himself into a Primaris clone body, he'd be the "Primarigenitor"

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:
The impression I got from Dark Imperium was that Cawl, whilst he may have had access to the traitor geneseed, and probably made some, I got the impression it was done after the Heresy, or at least during. Therefore, because they were hostile to the Imperium, I assumed that they wouldn't be actively giving Primaris recruits to Cawl.

Nobody gave him Primaris recruits. It's more likely that he just requisitioned samples of every Legion's geneseed and then also 'volunteered' a bunch of dudes to become big boys. In other words, it's very likely that the original batch of Primaris Space Wolves weren't from Fenris. Current ones probably are from Fenris.

There won’t be any original traitor legion recruits who got made into Primaris - the Primaris project was put in place by gulliman specifically after the heresy.

Any marine Cawl has experimented on with traitor gene seed are probably from his Terran and/or Martian recruits.

Also, there won’t be many marines from the original legion homeworlds from the time of the heresy/scouring. The first wave of Primaris Marines were almost all Terran or Martian. It’s likely the ones from legion homeworlds like felix and Bjarni were a very small initial test batch.

The first batch of space wolves Primaris were indeed not from fenris as confirmed by the new sw codex.

 Formosa wrote:
Fabulous bill is dieing, his clones are wearing out faster and faster, suddenly he find out about primaris, captures one, bam, he works out how to create a perfect clone without the disease and transfers his mind into the new body.

Primaris bile is born, new mini is released and the most fabulous apothecary in the universe is ready to rock and roll

Not in the present day. The dying Bile we see in the novels is from circa M37 as he has yet to study under the Haemonculi at that point, as by the end of the second novel the Harlequins invite him entry into Commoragh. I'd imagine the Haemonculi cure him in some way during his teaching there due to the DE's regeneration tech.

 Kriswall wrote:


I'm not a Chaos player, but I'd be totally ok with this. Is he cloning replacement bodies for himself now and transferring his mind?

Yup, he's been doing it since forever and has caches of bodies across the galaxy. He upgraded the tech in the second book with some bastardised infinity circuit made from stolen Wraithbone so he doesn't actually need to be present for the mind transfer. A copy of his mind is saved to, for lack of a better word, The Cloud and uploaded to a new body when the old one expires.

I wou;dn't advance it, this to my view doesn't seem like it's intended for anything beyond a chance to give players a shot at a "loyalist traitor sucessor chapter" much like how they're vague about the orgins of some old style chapters. Thus this is something I thinkl should very much be kept in "neither confirm nor deny" territory.

Given the existence of chapters like the Sons of the Phoenix it seems like Cawl pretty happily ignored Guilliman's order and put the chaos legion geneseed to use.

A bunch of Heresy-era Astartes from traitor legion genestock who are nevertheless loyalists? Probably do the same thing we did last time...

 Arachnofiend wrote:
Given the existence of chapters like the Sons of the Phoenix it seems like Cawl pretty happily ignored Guilliman's order and put the chaos legion geneseed to use.

Nonsense they're sons of Dorn.. REALLY! I mean... would Cawl lie!?

I'm not convinced Games-Workshop feels the need to work the Primaris angle into any new Chaos marine kits. Consider that plague marines and rubric marines are about the same scale anyway, and they didn't require any such fluffudgery. That said, if they do for whatever reason, feel the need to do it for Emperor's Children, then having Bile steal the technology from Cawl is pretty low hanging fruit in plot terms. It could probably be done reasonably well with a little consideration.

 Fifty wrote:
I see a bit of Judda storyline potential with this, if anyone remembers Morton Judd and the Judge Kraken storyline from Dredd.

And we all know how well that turned out.

Ahhh! ahhhhhh! Cracking story that one. But don't forget, the Judda were brainwashed, and that was the real problem behind them.

Sure, Kraken didn't pan out either, but again, brainwashing.

If you consider the second Rico Dredd, cloning can and does work in Megacity One.

 Ginjitzu wrote:
I'm not convinced Games-Workshop feels the need to work the Primaris angle into any new Chaos marine kits. Consider that plague marines and rubric marines are about the same scale anyway, and they didn't require any such fluffudgery. That said, if they do for whatever reason, feel the need to do it for Emperor's Children, then having Bile steal the technology from Cawl is pretty low hanging fruit in plot terms. It could probably be done reasonably well with a little consideration.

I have noticed a pattern in the newer 40k books of describing the chaos marines of being a farcry from a regular marine. They've become stronger from the warp, giving them an equivalent strength to the primaris marines.

 Ginjitzu wrote:
I'm not convinced Games-Workshop feels the need to work the Primaris angle into any new Chaos marine kits. Consider that plague marines and rubric marines are about the same scale anyway, and they didn't require any such fluffudgery. That said, if they do for whatever reason, feel the need to do it for Emperor's Children, then having Bile steal the technology from Cawl is pretty low hanging fruit in plot terms. It could probably be done reasonably well with a little consideration.

This. Plague Marines being all bloated 'normal marines' makes sense, but doing a 'slaanesh' release would need a character, a squad (because surely the part-finecast/part ancient plastic noise marines can't be front-and-centre of an emperor's children force again after five editions....) and ideally a keeper of secrets.

I agree Fabius Bile's version of primaris would give an emperor's children a similar 'scale' force with relatively little change; swap out the weapons and armour (so obviously bulked up older armour instead of mkX and, say, combibolters instead of bolt rifles, with sonic weapons instead of helblasters' plasma and you could make decent 'chaos primaris'). Making them unique to the emperor's children gives that legion something special (from chaos' perspective) without giving chaos the 'everything the imperium has but with spikes' problem.

BrianDavion wrote:

 Arachnofiend wrote:
Given the existence of chapters like the Sons of the Phoenix it seems like Cawl pretty happily ignored Guilliman's order and put the chaos legion geneseed to use.

Nonsense they're sons of Dorn.. REALLY! I mean... would Cawl lie!?

I like to think that Guilliman immediately recognized the Sons of the Phoenix for what they are, but now that they're out on the field fighting battles there is nothing he can do about them; to get rid of them he would have to make their real inheritance known and the knowledge that traitor geneseed was involved would throw the entire Primaris project into question and give the Inquisition a ton of ammo to use against him and Cawl.

locarno24 wrote:

 Ginjitzu wrote:
I'm not convinced Games-Workshop feels the need to work the Primaris angle into any new Chaos marine kits. Consider that plague marines and rubric marines are about the same scale anyway, and they didn't require any such fluffudgery. That said, if they do for whatever reason, feel the need to do it for Emperor's Children, then having Bile steal the technology from Cawl is pretty low hanging fruit in plot terms. It could probably be done reasonably well with a little consideration.

This. Plague Marines being all bloated 'normal marines' makes sense, but doing a 'slaanesh' release would need a character, a squad (because surely the part-finecast/part ancient plastic noise marines can't be front-and-centre of an emperor's children force again after five editions....) and ideally a keeper of secrets.

I agree Fabius Bile's version of primaris would give an emperor's children a similar 'scale' force with relatively little change; swap out the weapons and armour (so obviously bulked up older armour instead of mkX and, say, combibolters instead of bolt rifles, with sonic weapons instead of helblasters' plasma and you could make decent 'chaos primaris'). Making them unique to the emperor's children gives that legion something special (from chaos' perspective) without giving chaos the 'everything the imperium has but with spikes' problem.

Eh, I don't think you are giving the Emperor's Children enough credit... I mean before the Death Guard Codex what was it that made Death Guard Death Guard? It was basically just Plague Marines honestly, maybe a forgeworld blight drone or something. Really until the TKS and DG books came out its not like DG or TKS had any more unit variety than EC or WE! What does an EC release need? Really updated plastic kits so they aren't relying on terrible finecast upgrade kits, and a shiny new plastic sonic hellbrute kit (to replace the old forgeworld oop one), and maybe a few new releases... like sonic terminators and plastic daemon Fulgrim.

Still I agree that a Fabious Bile themed Primaris marines are prettly likely, but I was under the impression that fluff had Bile part ways from the children. He is sort of freelancing now, mercenary mad scientist of the warp. Of course he was originally from the EC, so it would be easy to have fluff bringing him back into the fold, especially if Fulgrim makes an appearance and starts reuniting the Legion for a larger campaign... somebodys got to put Guilliman back to sleep man... I would not be surprised if he is used as an edge to bring Primaris into the corrupted chaos fold. Primaris would actually be really interesting in EC, as they provide a solid opportunity to return the Legion to its search of perfection. My own EC Warband's fluff is based around the pursuit of perfection. My Chaos Lord strives for perfection for perfections sake and has lost sight of anything and everything else.

I was under the impression that fluff had Bile part ways from the children

Ye, but the same can be said of Ahriman prior to the gathering storm series and ahriman trilogy.

locarno24 wrote:

I was under the impression that fluff had Bile part ways from the children

Ye, but the same can be said of Ahriman prior to the gathering storm series and ahriman trilogy.

Indeed. Bile can be brought back into the fold, or at the very least, still part of a potential EC codex. Especially if GW use that particular codex to further the story and release several needed plastic updates, potentially including Chaos Primaris

-

chaos Primaris would kinda dissappoint me TBH, I'd prefer to see GW have chaos acheive a similer but differant result with warp fuckery. Maybe some sort of "demonicly enhanced" marines, not actually posessed but...

on that note, posessed terminators would be truely an awesome idea.

 akaean wrote:

locarno24 wrote:

 Ginjitzu wrote:
I'm not convinced Games-Workshop feels the need to work the Primaris angle into any new Chaos marine kits. Consider that plague marines and rubric marines are about the same scale anyway, and they didn't require any such fluffudgery. That said, if they do for whatever reason, feel the need to do it for Emperor's Children, then having Bile steal the technology from Cawl is pretty low hanging fruit in plot terms. It could probably be done reasonably well with a little consideration.

This. Plague Marines being all bloated 'normal marines' makes sense, but doing a 'slaanesh' release would need a character, a squad (because surely the part-finecast/part ancient plastic noise marines can't be front-and-centre of an emperor's children force again after five editions....) and ideally a keeper of secrets.

I agree Fabius Bile's version of primaris would give an emperor's children a similar 'scale' force with relatively little change; swap out the weapons and armour (so obviously bulked up older armour instead of mkX and, say, combibolters instead of bolt rifles, with sonic weapons instead of helblasters' plasma and you could make decent 'chaos primaris'). Making them unique to the emperor's children gives that legion something special (from chaos' perspective) without giving chaos the 'everything the imperium has but with spikes' problem.

Eh, I don't think you are giving the Emperor's Children enough credit... I mean before the Death Guard Codex what was it that made Death Guard Death Guard? It was basically just Plague Marines honestly, maybe a forgeworld blight drone or something. Really until the TKS and DG books came out its not like DG or TKS had any more unit variety than EC or WE! What does an EC release need? Really updated plastic kits so they aren't relying on terrible finecast upgrade kits, and a shiny new plastic sonic hellbrute kit (to replace the old forgeworld oop one), and maybe a few new releases... like sonic terminators and plastic daemon Fulgrim.

Still I agree that a Fabious Bile themed Primaris marines are prettly likely, but I was under the impression that fluff had Bile part ways from the children. He is sort of freelancing now, mercenary mad scientist of the warp. Of course he was originally from the EC, so it would be easy to have fluff bringing him back into the fold, especially if Fulgrim makes an appearance and starts reuniting the Legion for a larger campaign... somebodys got to put Guilliman back to sleep man... I would not be surprised if he is used as an edge to bring Primaris into the corrupted chaos fold. Primaris would actually be really interesting in EC, as they provide a solid opportunity to return the Legion to its search of perfection. My own EC Warband's fluff is based around the pursuit of perfection. My Chaos Lord strives for perfection for perfections sake and has lost sight of anything and everything else.

Thousand Sons and Death Guard both have fundamental restrictions that the other traitor legions do not have - all Thousand Sons are either sorcerers or rubricae and all Death Guard are plagued. EC and WE don't really have any particular restrictions like this, they run a lot of their cult troops but regular CSM still definitely exist in their armies. Though not being particularly different from the main book doesn't stop Dark and Blood Angels from existing so that won't necessarily stop the remaining cult legions.