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Like, what explanation do you like to imagine for why the 2nd and 11th were expunged from records and blocked from memory and all that?

I like to imagine that it was because they were defeated. Each of these legions lost a crucial war or battle. Like failed to get a planet into compliance, or were overwhelmed by orks and suffered enormous casualties and had to retreat. Something like that.

Emperor was very, very, very big on propaganda, controlling information by force, and carefully cultivating the image He was presenting to both humanity and His enemies. For instance, the Imperial Truth forcefully insisting there was nothing supernatural about the warp, and nobody had to worry about it.

So maybe Emps thought it was absolutely vital to maintain the idea that his Astartes were unbeatable. To improve the morale of the nascent Imperium, to help ensure more efficient compliance, and to intimidate enemies like sentient Xenos.

And so when that falsehood was inevitably exposed, it had to be expunged from record and memory.

Another possibility I'm comfortable with is that they fell to Chaos, mutation, and/or treachery, but were destroyed swiftly. The reason the later traitor legions of the horus heresy weren't expunged from records was because it was simply too late by then: they had rampaged across the galaxy, so the truth was far far too big to contain, everyone had bigger things to worry about, Malcodor was dead, and Emps was sort-of-dead.

Mutation brought about through faulty geneseed. The Emperor eliminated 'failed experiments'.

More who they were rather than why they were erased form the record, I've got a few ideas floating around in my head that I quite like, but much of it isn't very thoroughly thought out or is contradicted by established canon. Much of this is ideas I first had back in early 2nd ed when the background wasn't as fleshed out and there was more room for head-canon. Even these ideas are not compatible with current canon or have been ret-conned, I still like them. More vague ideas I like rather than properly thought out head-canon:

- One of the Lost legions is the Grey Knights/Blood Ravens, based on a Psychic Primarch (the loyal counter-part to Magnus)

-One of the Lost Primarchs was Sigmar and the Old World is in the 40k universe trapped in a warp storm.

-Alpharius and Omegon aren't co-Primarchs, one of them is/was Primarch of a missing Legion.

- Valdor is a Lost Primarch, and the Custodes are actually one of the missing legions, the truth is covered up/hidden.

As for what happened to the the lost legions and why they were removed from history, some of the ideas I've entertained are:

-One of the Primarchs was raised to be a pacifist and when re-united with his legion he convinced them to be pacifists too. So they were wiped out and the truth covered up.

-One of the Primarchs was raised by mutants/abhumans/xenos and refused to take part in the Great Crusade because he wanted to co-exist with xenos rather than exterminate them. So they were wiped out and erased from history.

-One of the Primarchs was never found, and the legion had geneseed instability problems (EC and TS style) or other issues (Salamanders style) which they weren't able to overcome without their Primarch, so they died out. The failure was covered up.

Aash wrote:


-One of the Primarchs was raised by mutants/abhumans/xenos and refused to take part in the Great Crusade because he wanted to co-exist with xenos rather than exterminate them. So they were wiped out and erased from history.

Oooh, I like that idea!

Just remembered another idea I like for the Lost Legions, not sure where I first heard/read it, but I can't take credit for it:

The vast Administration of the Imperium screwed up the record keeping. Somebody in an archive somewhere was numbering the legions in Roman Numerals: so II and XI, while another archivist was using Arabic numerals: 2 and 11.

The records go muddled during consolidation/inventory checking of the archives and some records were thrown out, mistakenly thought to be duplicates : Legion II and Legion 11 were consolidated into one record and so thoroughly muddled that to cover-up the book-keeping error, the scribes destroyed all records of both legions and removed them from the data archives to cover their own behinds. A few thousand years later at the next stock take, there were no records to be found and nobody could explain it, so they are officially recorded as expunged from Imperial Records. Nobody is stupid enough to ask up the chain of command, because surely someone above them knows about it and they must have been expunged for a reason, right?...

Thread resolved, please lock. Aash's answer is now canon.

I like the pacifist idea for one of them. Perhaps instead of trying to get a world into compliance, they allied with the world to resist the other legions.

I always had the idea that one of them was xenos corrupted/infected during the Ragdan Xenocides. Perhaps the Wolves were called in to eliminate them. I picture Russ standing before an infected primarch who is begging Russ to kill him. I also see the Marines of that legion being wiped out, regardless of whether or not they were infected too ("Brother! We're clean! We're..." *blam*).

Yup, I would put the Rangdan Xenocides down as accounting for one Primarch.I would put the other down to something Chaos-related. Malcador states that only one Primarch was deemed mentally strong enough to withstand the knowledge of Chaos so there had to have been some prior exposure.

My thoughts on one of them is that they turned out to be a blank and either was killed for their growing wrongness on their homeworld or by the Big E when they met years later.

The other I also think was friendly to Xenos and wouldn't fight and was disposed of as a failure.

I beliv at least one legion suffered from such horriably deficant gene flaws the Legion simply collapsed. rather then admit that space marines could be that flawed the records where sealed.

Both Legions were badly painted, bringing shame on GW Marketing, and hurting quarterly profits. THAT is why they were erased so completely.

We've been given plenty of examples of Legions being prone to mutations, some on the brink of annihilation (i.e. Magnus' Thousand Sons, Fulgrim's Emperor's Children, etc.). So then why cover it up, but leave us, the reader, with the knowledge of other Legions' faults? We've also had information on Angron's status being a lost cause because of the Butcher's Nails imbedded into his brain and the Emperor stating that it was only being a matter of time before his death. If we are to look at the Emperor's actions and words, truth be, it wasn't because of mutations and/or technological flaws. He allowed the aforementioned Legions to continue, so why would he coverup those two and only two?

We've been given plenty of example of Legions rebelling, some by accident (i.e. Magnus' Thousand Sons, Luther's Dark Angels*), while others intentional (Lorgar's Word Bearers). So then why cover it up, but leave us, the reader, with the knowledge of other Legions' faults? If we are to look at the Emperor's actions and words, truth be, it wasn't because of rebellion. The nine Legions were declared Excommunicate Traitoris and allowed to stay in the ledgers, so why would the Emperor coverup those two and only two?

It's neither and ADB stated they (i.e. the writers at Black Library) had no 'behind the curtain agenda' on why they were 'lost'. Going back to what Games Workshop had said before the Horus Heresy series came out, they simply wanted you to come up with your own "Legion".

You could easily ask Cawl, Roboute Guilliman, any of the Traitor Primarchs, Bjorn the Fell-Handed, etc. on who the two 'lost' Legions were and why, but because of 'reasons', none will tell.

*debatable

The two lost legions were wiped out by some backwater rabble and the Imperium could not handle the shame.

The two missing primarchs fell in love and ran off together.

That they never really existed at all.

The lost legions are one of those background elements that don't need explanation. Like Ynnead or Super orks.

I cant imagine what would be so bad that they would have to be covered up, but I imagine that the 2nd primarch/ legion was one whos specialty was as admirals or void combat and exploration.

I forget the fluff I had behind it but Its believed one legion dissapeared and one killed off. The 2nd legion, being the 2nd legion made, was one of the first to be sent out off Terra, specifically as a vanguard or to do recon on worlds that would be in the Great Crusade's path. They were to document worlds of import and possible warp routes and all that.

I imagine because the 2nd primarch was sent out so far so early, that he ended up getting lost by going past the light of the Astronomican due to his belief that he was such a perfect sailor that he did not need the Astronomican to find his way or hold him back.

The loss of the entire second legion occuring due to non-combat reasons extremley early in the Crusade was simply just so embarassing that the Emperor pretended it never happened. I imagine the Emperor thinks of him as "that idiot who literally got lost and never found his way back."

Alternativley, maybe the 2nd primarch was a female, and the entire legion was to be filled with female marines, and this is how Emps found out that females are not compatible with the marine tranaformation procedure. Maybe they all eventually mutated, (including the primarch) like the TS, despite having a completley stable geneseed, simply because they were not male. I can see why that would be covered up.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
One of the primarchs could have been engineered specifically to be a leader amongst his brothers, and was originally who the role of Warmaster was to be given to. Dude was extra charismatic and was so masterful in rhetoric that Emps saw him as a threat to his rule and covered it up to not seem like hed kill his son for such a petty reason

 Abadabadoobaddon wrote:
The two missing primarchs fell in love and ran off together.

Ok this is pretty good.

The two legions were female. They were believed to be sterile. However, "life finds a way" and they gained the ability to reproduce Marines. This, of course, was a massive loss of control for The Emperor and could not be allowed. Hence, biblical levels of purging and suppression.

I like it being unexplained - the clerical error idea is pretty excellent, and feels very 40k - but doesn't feel very 30k.

My theory of choice is that at least one of them accepted command of his legion (after all, the Imperial Battlefleet is Very Big) but waited til the right moment to just transmit a message saying "nah mate, your plan is stupid and your ideals are contradictory" and just booked it past the light of the astronomican. The Imperial bureaucracy learned from this, and that's why they went out of their way to ensure Corax never really saw the slavery that "compliance" entailed.

I like to think that whatever it was that caused the legions to be erased would cause Horus to be enraged about being made to never even utter their name. At least one of them. I would imagine that them failing in their task and being wiped to a man and not wanting to broadcast a space marine legion not being an unstoppable force being a reason the emperor would want that particular legion’s memory erased. Maybe Horus would be enraged by the fact that he realizes that all the glory of the emperor’s loyal servant could just as easily be for nothing if a Primarch and his legion failed in the same way. All of their triumphs and service in building the imperium could be swept under a rug, remembered only in shame, and I could imagine being forced to face the possibility of such a fate would enrage Horus so. To the war master, a fate such as that would be infinitely worse than death. And such a thing would leave him even more susceptible to the dark voices that manipulated him to initiate the Horus heresy. I do recall Horus having a very angry conversation about the lost legions, struggling to utter one of their names before having his mouth forcibly shut by Malcador.