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For years I have loved the idea of the lost legions, specifically how some use them to make their own legion. My favorite example of this is the Lost and forgotten project, which if you haven’t seen I recommend. Very detailed, well written IMO and not Mary Sue at all. Ever since I have used that as a standard, to the point that I consider it apart of my head cannon. So that left me with the 11th legion to work with. The Lost and Forgotten project used the Primarch tarot theory as a basis, found here;

http://menducia.atspace.com/primarchs/X.html

Found this very helpful as guide to what kind of character each Primarch had, and how this specific lost Primarch could have interacted with his brothers and what possible character defects influenced his fall.
My first reaction to this was a space pirate haha, which did not sound very interesting to me and would be difficult to write. So I read more of the tarot page and saw how two entries make direct comparisons between the 11th Primarch and two known primarchs that wasn’t concentrated just on how they react to one another. Specifically the entries on;
The hanged man(Sanguinius) Deep similarities yet differences in approach and character make these two a well matched pair.
And
The sun(Rogal Dorn) The Sun and Fortune are much alike, though the Sun is rather more balanced, centred and self controlled.

Now with these two characters to build off of, I came up with a couple of details about this Primarch that I find interesting and not too far fetched.
1.the Primarch had a gene seed flaw of some kind that was similar to Sanguinius, I think that it had something to do with Sanguinius being connected to all of his marines in some way(his death, the red thirst, the black rage).
2. The Primarch was a leader of his people similar to Dorn maybe? His background is sparse on details other than loyalty and the standard things associated with any Primarch. Except he took over his entire system and re-activated the Phalanx.
3. This Primarch was too trusting of people in general to the point of naive. This comes from the fact that this Primarch has been so “lucky” as it were that he probably always won or rarely lost at anything, no matter how bad the circumstances. Perhaps this was a latent physic ability?
4.His lax or loose attitude to rules and norms bothered many, so insubordination would be common, or at least a confidence to do whatever he wants rather than wait for an order.
5.Regardless of his laxed attitude he was generally well liked by most, or at least not having any real rivals like many of the others.
6.Could be mislead or lied to by others more easily than his brothers.
7.The Primarch utilized a hybrid style of war, perhaps wanted to get up close and personal with enemy like Blood Angels but aren’t as close combat oriented? Drop-pod assaults utilizing bolsters and ballistic weapons?
This makes me think he was younger then most when he was found, and was successful very quickly at conquering his world and/or his system. If you have made it this far I will stop musing here and ask does any of this seem to be plausible? My intention is to avoid creating the Mary Sue chapter of perfect marines with the a perfect Primarch. Thank you for enduring this post, I realized I could have kept writing but I didn’t want scare everyone with an even bigger wall of text, yikes!

Musselman wrote:
and ask does any of this seem to be plausible?

Sure, why not. GW has written worse official gak....

Musselman wrote:
My intention is to avoid creating the Mary Sue chapter of perfect marines with the a perfect Primarch.

I've got harsh news for you; Even though your stuff & aims might be better than GWs, nobody except you (and maybe a few friends) really cares what you're head cannon consists of. So write up your chapter stories as you please. When it comes time to roll the dice all anyone else cares about is wich RULES you're using.

Imagine if you would the following for a chapter trait and super doctrine:

Wrath of a forgotten legion- All models with this trait get +1 to wound with their pistols and any model equipped with a pistol gets +1 attack in close combat. If a unit with this trait suffers a casualty from a shooting attack they may immediately make a pile in move of 6" towards the unit that caused the casualty (this pile in move can bring them within an inch of an enemy unit).
Whilst units with this trait are in assault doctrine, all their pistol weapons gain +1 to their number of shots when within 1" of an enemy unit.

@Eihnlazer that is interesting, I haven’t even begun to think about how they would play but that sounds good to me. I know it is difficult to think of a way to combine close/fast attack with big guns haha. I have always played my marines as either Iron hands or Ultras, ever since they gave the Iron Hands a 6+, I justified that since my marines have a connection to Luck, then maybe they just avoid or shrug off the wounds rather than cybernetic enhancements.

@ccs haha yes I know that no one will care and I wasn’t planning on giving a history lesson before each match. I guess I wanted to make sure that my thought process wasn’t too off base. Unfortunately I am more of a fluff writer than pure gamer haha.

I am leaning more towards the Primarch and his marines having an unconscious ability to avoid damage or have miraculous instances of luck that leads to victory. Also thinking the Primarch was a loud mouth, confident and theatrical fighter. Not out of ego or arrogance but out of a tactical sense of drawing attention to him so that his army can perform their duties and move up the field fast. Maybe this heroic nature is also shared amongst the officers and veterans in emulation of their Primarch.

With the way I read the fluff, the story behind the 2 missing legions is most likely something along the lines of:

1. The legion was sent to check out something strange, got infected/corrupted, then killed off and wiped from existence.

2. The primarch and his gene-sons started mutating far worse than anything previously seen, perhaps becoming completely unstable. This caused the Big E to put them down, or if they still had their right mind possibly ship them off to farther reach's of space and then wiped from the records.



These are the most likely of scenarios, but you could honestly just come up with whatever floats your boat.



Oh and what I really love about my above traits and super docs is that you could only loose 2 guys from overwatch max.

Well, dunno about the 11th but Forgeworld pretty much decided the 2nd Legion are the Red Scorpions.

Proof? Look at the Legion vehicles. The Deimos predator and the Armoured Proteus LR for example. Both are painted in the Red Scorpion scheme and both are marked "II" whereas every other vehicle is also marked with the corresponding Legion Number....

Yes @Einhlazer I agree, at least one if not both were probably infected or wiped out during the Rangdan xenocides. Isn’t there even two mentions around M30.960 or something about redacted events that involved the space wolves? I have been thinking that maybe the 11th was the one who leaped before he looked sometimes. Either being too naive, too confident or just misinformed. Then either lost all his men, all got infected or even better they weren’t infected and the Emperor couldn’t take the chance so he had them all purged.

@Morkhoiz I haven’t looked into that, and the only things I remember about the Red Scorpions are that they have large number of Apothecaries and are obsessed with their gene seed purity. Very possible but I also thought the theory was they were a successor of Emperor’s Children gene seed?

Personally I like the idea that one was lost in war in something like the Rangdan Xenocides and the other just wasn't on board with the Emperors plans whether they didn't fight at all or actively opposed him.

Yes I agree that the Rangden xenocides are the most likely option for at least one legion was destroyed or it led to their destruction. I can imagine that one Primarch just got too confident and went head on against them and lost badly. I am planning on using it as the event that leads to the ultimate destruction of the legion.

That sounds too much like Matt Cauthron from the Wheel of Time

Orkimedez_Atalaya wrote:
That sounds too much like Matt Cauthron from the Wheel of Time

I have not read that so I am sure you are right. That is the challenge with story telling, most enjoyable stories follow similar plot points and threads/themes. I have also been working on a story set just before Dark Imperium involving the high lords of terra hand picking specific inquisitors, mechanicus, imperial guard, and a space marine chapter all being set up to die because the lords of terra are sick of them haha. This is the main plot for many movies and stories, off the top of my head Star Trek Into Darkness, the Dirty Dozen and Suicide Squad to name a few, hell I am not surprised if this story already exists in 40k. I have more to the story but I used this premise so that I could brainstorm some reasons why all these varying branches of the Imperium would be working together.

As for this Primarch, perhaps like many pride cometh before the fall haha. I also think it could be interesting if his legion was destroyed and he lived. Caused him so much shame he tried to rebuild his legion and similar to Corax he made genetically unstable monsters and refused to stop maybe? An army of twisted Astartes having to be put down by the space wolves would make sense. But that is why this is enjoyable to me, because with all the horrible things that the imperium allows with the blood angels and space wolves gene seed, still having records of the traitor marines and Xenos but these two guys? No record at all. I know there is no answer but I appreciate you letting me know if I am being too cliche becuase I don’t want to write a story where the marines and Primarch are perfect otherwise just be the Ultramarines haha. Please any other ideas are welcome.

Musselman wrote:
Yes I agree that the Rangden xenocides are the most likely option for at least one legion was destroyed or it led to their destruction. I can imagine that one Primarch just got too confident and went head on against them and lost badly. I am planning on using it as the event that leads to the ultimate destruction of the legion.

If a legion we’re simply destroyed in war they would have been martyred and memorialised, not written out of history. Both of those primarchs did something so bad that the emperor wanted to forget they ever existed and and made it so that the other hardly dared even mentioned them.

Not to mention the Chaos Primarchs don't talk about them either.

mrFickle wrote:

Musselman wrote:
Yes I agree that the Rangden xenocides are the most likely option for at least one legion was destroyed or it led to their destruction. I can imagine that one Primarch just got too confident and went head on against them and lost badly. I am planning on using it as the event that leads to the ultimate destruction of the legion.

If a legion we’re simply destroyed in war they would have been martyred and memorialised, not written out of history. Both of those primarchs did something so bad that the emperor wanted to forget they ever existed and and made it so that the other hardly dared even mentioned them.

That is a good point, it just seems too coincidental that the space wolves have two events from their history completely redacted just like all the records connected to the lost legions.

Well then maybe it is not anything other than the primarchs hurt the Emperor’s pride? Maybe they didn’t worship him enough? That all seems to be going against the whole “I am not a god” philosophy. Lorgar had his whole legion forced to kneel before the Emperor because he was moving too slow in the crusade, so it couldn’t have been purely a religious or even a military issue or else they would have gotten a stern talking to. If it was a mutation he wouldn’t have tried to save the Emperors Children or the Thousand sons since they were both full of different mutations. I mean he had 20 different tries, did all he could to save and fix there various issues but then just decides to destroy 2 for the hell of it?

So that leaves only a few possibilities that also seem too ridiculous or just not interesting, either one or both of the primarchs were threats to the Emperor or the Crusade(which if this was the case why did he make them that way?), they left the Sol system never to return or they died during the Crusade. Haha that’s what makes this so fun and frustrating to theorize about.