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I am beginning a SM chapter with focus on killing chaos rather than supporting the Imperium. By this I mean that this chapter will ally with xenos forces willingly if it means death to the warp-spawn. The issue I am having is that the army I am making is primarily an apoc force who will use vanilla marines, grey knights, dark angels, and imperial knights rules and models (all converted to look like one singular force) as a sort of defector chapter, accepting those who wish to focus on killing daemons rather than xenos, and I want to try to make a fun lore behind the chapter that fits in the 40k universe. Seeing as how most chapters are xeno-phobic in their lore from what I understand, I wanted to have this chapter founded on one of the two lost legions, who grew and evolved into its cu rrent state. My friend and I have been throwing ideas around, but seeing as how there is next to nothing known about these legions, can anyone help me out?

What is the fan-based lore most accepted about these legions?

What chapter or Primarch would best fit a xenos friendly chaos hunting chapter out of the existing lore?

If it helps, in standard games this force will most likely use iron hands chapter tactics as a vanilla marine force, cuz fnp on a force allied w/ tau support is freakin badass

Skip down a paragraph if you're 110% set on using the missing legion and are not interesting in possible alternatives.

First, what do you gain from using a missing legion rather than a lost founding chapter? Before you answer, keep in mind that successors are not, and should never be considered, carbon copies of their progenitors. Being an Ultramarine successor does not make you codex-compliant nor do you kiss Marneus Calgar's feet, being a White Scars successor does not make you addicted to going fast, being an Imperial Fist successor does not make you incapable of doing anything but defense, being a Raven Guard successor does not mean, "All stealth, all the time." And being a Blood Angels or Dark Angels successor...well...you're a little stuck with those. All I'm saying is there are more creatively interesting ways to make a chapter rather than relying on the missing legions, and chapters are defined by more than their geneseed. Homeworld traditions, policies established by early chapter masters, supply concerns and more can all play roles that could easily surpass geneseed in terms of impact on the chapter. Perhaps a chapter lost half of its numbers of chaos sometime in the past, like the Black Wings or the Doom Legion did. Now their focus on preventing chaos has overshadowed their other vows to purge the xenos and the mutant. Perhaps they're not marines at all, but a joint Inquisitorial/ Adeptus Mechanicus task-force brought together to make a focused strike on chaos. The presence of Imperial Knights would certainly help.

That said, I'll do my best to help answer your questions

What is the fan-based lore most accepted about these legions?

What we know about the legions is that they did meet their primarchs and did participate in the Great Crusade. One of the missing primarchs was the 3rd primarch found, while the other was the 19th found. They are known as the Forgotten and the Purged and according to Magnus, were removed by the Emperor personally. They are said to have "acted shamefully" but the specifics have never been explained. Personally, I believe that one foresaw the Emperor's plan and moved to stop him prematurely, or foresaw the Emperor's plan and sacrificed himself to, in some way, ensure that it occurred. What that plan was seems to have changed several times throughout the events of the Great Crusade and the Heresy.

What chapter or Primarch would best fit a xenos friendly chaos hunting chapter out of the existing lore?

Grey Knights, without a doubt. They're the most pragmatic chapter when it comes to dealing with xenos and will do anything in their power to prevent the spread of chaos.

Wow, really helpful post above. Allow me to offset that by being mostly useless lol

From what I understand those two legions and their primarchs are not missing but were exterminated by the Space Wolves on the command of the Emperor, much like what happened to the Thousand Sons, if not exactly.

 changerofways wrote:
From what I understand those two legions and their primarchs are not missing but were exterminated by the Space Wolves on the command of the Emperor, much like what happened to the Thousand Sons, if not exactly.

Almost. There are 'hints' in the Horus Heresy books that at least one of them was wiped out by the Space Wolves and the other was most likely absorbed into the Ultramarines. In either case, neither still existed by the time of the Horus Heresy.

Even before the Heresy novels came along, it's been fairly widely accepted for as long as the missing Legions have been in the fluff that they wouldn't have been erased from records if they were still around, given that the Legions who rebelled were not similarly expunged.


So I would recommend just going with the suggestion in the first response here, and make them a successor Chapter from an unknown founding if you want the mystery in your background.

Thank you all so much, very useful advice and filling me in on a lot of lore I was unaware of. Seeing as how there will be grey knight models in my army, I think using them as a rough template or at least as a successor chapter to them would be a good place to start. Thanks again!

Grey Knights don't have any known successors, as they're not really a 'normal' Marine Chapter.

Which isn't to say don't go that way (it's your game, do what you want ) but you will get a certain amount of resistance to your background if you go for the 'successor to a Chapter that doesn't have any successors' route.

There are any number of ways to explain it though - a secret founding being the obvious one, but the next easy one just being that your Chapter was founded after the period covered by the existing background.

Could say a secret founding. Aimed to be a back up to grey knights and contingency plan if they took too many loss,s or failed?

Or a Kind of secret back up plan known by even less than know grey knights, black ops types working with xeno,s, dodgey missions, alpha legion style sabotage of chaos maybe?

Like grey knights black ops brothers?

It helps if you understand the games design decisions behind the two missing primarchs.

It was GW's only real attempt at formal blanking. Blanking is a term used initially by Chaosium in the 80's to refer to an IP border which is named and set in canon but otherwise ignored. Blanking can involve characters and their surroundings as with the two missing primarchs, or can more usually involve a geographical region. There are two missing primarchs so one can be loyalist and one traitor if you prefer.
The purpose of blanking is to establish a safe area in canon where individuals can make up their own fluff. As the blanked region/characters are set aside for this purpose it means that you can make up anything you want about them and play a game with someone else and unlike fan changes to extant fluff doesnt cause any complications. It is a useful tool for RPG world building but is of little consequence for miniatures game world building as there is little or no narrative. 40K was orginally intended as an RPG universe, but GW had the accidental good fortune to release it first as a skirmish miniatures game which was indented to be a small add-on to the RPG franchise. GW didn't proceed further with blanking because the Rogue Trader RPG didnt take off, 40K the miniatures game did instead and thus random fan content ceased to be an issue. Later as the histories because cemented some connecting fluff for the fluff absent characters was accrued.

Now this is understood you can use the missing primarchs for their original purpose, or not as you see fit.

jareddm wrote:
First, what do you gain from using a missing legion rather than a lost founding chapter?

I would go one step further than this. I actually dislike homebrew chapters based on the lost legions. It is incredibly unoriginal, and is pretty much a guaranteed way to get your background labeled 'fanwank' (extra points if you come up with godawful Mary-sue primarch to lead them).

A good rule of thumb for carving out your own piece of a fantasy universe is to try and avoid canon characters and events as much as possible. The more you encroach on these the more contrived your story generally starts to sound. It is also good to avoid the unusual/exceptional back story (which in this case would be the back story to your back story) as this is often the first stone on the path to suedom. In the end it is the filling-out and attention to detail that makes chapters cool, not grandiose claims about their origin.

There is no reason why your chapter can't have an elite 0th company dedicated to daemon hunting. It would be natural for these guys to have training and equipment that resembles the GKs because they are doing the same job. No special explanation required.

This sounds a lot like the reasons why I became a Grey Knight player in the first place. I did not like Chaos in the least for my own reasons but I like the Imperium and the Eldar and didn't like how both are a bit xenophobic so I wanted a force from the Imperium who would ally with Xenos in order to defeat Chaos. I got into the Inquisition and thus the Grey Knights. They are lead by an Ordo Malleus Inquisitor whose sole mission is the purging of Chaos which means allying with Eldar to do it. Also in the short story "Ghost Halls", the Grey Knights give the spirit stones back to the Eldar after purging a craftworld of Daemons.

With this backround, I have a pure Grey Knights army, I have an army with Eldar allies and I am working on an army that incorporates SM allies.

The only problem is that you can't customize GK like you can a chapter of your own since they are pretty much put together and paint. You could do Red Hunters though which uses GK rules. Other than that, the GK are a separate founding and have no successors because their gene-seed is rumored to be from the Emperor himself and they have no Primarch.

Or you know you could do what the exorcists did and could be from the newer batch of space marines from the cursed 21st founding where they experimented and may of created new geneseed.

Or you could be a chapter that has had their geneseed mutated so much to a point that it is unrecogonizable from its primogenitor.

Such as my chapter the Wanderers. A Dark Angels Descendant that have no connections left to the dark angels. They aren't considered to be apart of the unforgiven because they have no mannerisms or any genetic similarities anymore. They are just something else. This maybe because of genetic implementation or mutation of the geneseed, but the chapter really doesn't care as they will continue to fight.

Its really up to you. But I know tons of people that use the "My chapter is the lost legion."

In creating my own lost legion chapter, I have found a good option is to NOT make them a direct descendants of the lost legions but maybe just use the gene-seed in a later founding( like the Cursed founding or one that has no details). It is just my opinion but that way it helps to drive your narrative by deciding when and where your chapter likes to operate. They hate daemons, have them near the Eye of Terror, using unusual tech that they have developed or found. I am not trying to write it for you, I have just asked similar questions in the past and the majority answer is less is more. Make them mysterious, only a select few know their true origin. This can also help you to decide who are your enemies, chaos and most likely some organization associated with the Imperium(SoB, Grey Knights, Inquisition, etc). Hope I was helpful, and I will be interested to see how your chapter turns out.

insaniak wrote:

 changerofways wrote:
From what I understand those two legions and their primarchs are not missing but were exterminated by the Space Wolves on the command of the Emperor, much like what happened to the Thousand Sons, if not exactly.

Almost. There are 'hints' in the Horus Heresy books that at least one of them was wiped out by the Space Wolves and the other was most likely absorbed into the Ultramarines. In either case, neither still existed by the time of the Horus Heresy.

Given recent information on the Night of the Wolf, in which the Space Wolves fought the World Eaters and nearly killed Angron, any hints the Space Wolves had previously mentioned concerning "being unleashed on their fellow legions" is most likely a reference to the Night of the Wolf rather than to the missing legions. As for being absorbed into the Ultramarines, the author has directly come out and stated that this is not what happened to the missing legions.

Asherian Command wrote:Or you know you could do what the exorcists did and could be from the newer batch of space marines from the cursed 21st founding where they experimented and may of created new geneseed.

Exorcists are 13th founding and are actually mentioned as being Grey Knight successors in several sources, but it's a good point nonetheless. Hell, I'd personally say the Exorcists would be a great chapter to use whole-cloth. They have a unique organizational structure based around the Orisons, each focused on a different aspect of chaos or warp study, in addition to the normal company structure.

I'm so glad I posted these questions here, you guys have helped me out immensely with a wealth of lore knowledge I would have butchered. Going to do some more digging and rethink the lore aspect of how I want to portray this chapter. Thank you so much guys!


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Based on lore and given the sm improved psysiology, is there any evidence that they still succeptable to amnesia?

Depends on what you mean by amnesia. Certain chapters, like the Red Hunters make extensive of memory wipes after particularly hellish encounters. A number of chapters that have served alongside the Grey Knights have also been required to submit to memory wipes. I imagine this is usually just to erase the specifics of what occurred, not that the occurrence happened at all.

I'm talking about something along the lines of a company of marines awaken on a warp ravaged planet surrounded by dead daemons, their armor scorched beyond any identifiable heraldry of existing chapters, and the collective whole not remembering who they are or to what chapter they belong. This chapter might be thoroughly interrogated by the Inquisition, and upon being cleared of the taint of chaos, is given rights to form its own chapter, establish its own gene-seed, and hunt down generals of chaos in an attempt to discover what could wipe the memories of 100 space marines completely.

Too much of a stretch?

It might be. There are chapters that don't know anything about their origins though like the Blood Ravens. For what ever reason the origins of their chapter are gone. So it isn't unknown to happen for a chapter not to know it's origins and to rally around an ideal or fighting for a certain cause.

For just 100 SM, I would honestly say the Inquisition would just put them in Deathwatch. A chapter to rise from just a hundred would be difficult. Their gene-seed would have to rigorously tested and analyzed.

Fair point about the gene-seed taking more time and tests than I outlined. Back to the drawing board :p

Do a lot of fluff work by going on warhammer 40,000 wiki. there is a wealth of information on the missing Legions and the 21st Founding.

 GuardRalph wrote:
Do a lot of fluff work by going on warhammer 40,000 wiki. there is a wealth of information on the missing Legions and the 21st Founding.

Lexicanum might be a safer bet than the wiki. There has been a lot of stuff of dubious accuracy popping up on the wiki of late.

squidhills wrote:

 GuardRalph wrote:
Do a lot of fluff work by going on warhammer 40,000 wiki. there is a wealth of information on the missing Legions and the 21st Founding.

Lexicanum might be a safer bet than the wiki. There has been a lot of stuff of dubious accuracy popping up on the wiki of late.

I would second this. Lexicanum has a lot more quality control.

Also, whose Chapter Tactics you were going to use? You could draw inspiration from the parent chapter or from a successor chapter that they have. I was originally going to use Blood Ravens before going Imperial Fist and was going to have to give them a Chapter Tactic and then make a lore reason. After finding that nothing fit, I went with my second choice the Imperial Fists and they slowly became my favored chapter. And what I mean by using it is that you don't exactly have to say that is the parent legion but they have spent time battling the hellish fires of the warp and have the Salamander's Chapter Tactics.

Also, with chapters like they Blood Ravens, they don't implement any amnesia, only that their historical records go back only so far with everything happening before that or who the founding was from is a mystery something the chapter seeks as they seek their origins. As far as hatreds of daemons, take inspiration from the Crimson Fists with their hatred of Orks, you could at some point been ravaged by continuous assault from daemons because your battle barge from whence your chapter was founded was stuck in the Eye of Terror which is the reason why the records of your origin was destroyed. After escaping, you had your gene-seed analyzed and passed letting the chapter to continue.

 Pryamarch wrote:
I'm talking about something along the lines of a company of marines awaken on a warp ravaged planet surrounded by dead daemons, their armor scorched beyond any identifiable heraldry of existing chapters, and the collective whole not remembering who they are or to what chapter they belong. This chapter might be thoroughly interrogated by the Inquisition, and upon being cleared of the taint of chaos, is given rights to form its own chapter, establish its own gene-seed, and hunt down generals of chaos in an attempt to discover what could wipe the memories of 100 space marines completely.

Too much of a stretch?

Well, when the Imperium make a new chapter, they start with one marine ('s worth of zygotes) and they make a thousand identical copies of it before they implant a single one. That way, they have a template to type against to see if the geneseed is mutated.

The one time that didn't happen was when all the Iron Hands successors split almost down the middle over ideology. The High Lords allowed the nonconforming members of those chapters to form a new, separate chapter, but that was to prevent a civil war for the control of like five chapters, which could essentially destroy both halves of the chapters. You don't have that.


If you do have your hundred marines, and you give names to even fifteen of them, I will like them more than most armies. However, you should just use them as they are and not make them a whole chapter. You have no real reason for that.

I was thinking of using Iron Hands chapter tactics. The idea of an army of tough marines w/ fnp appeals to me since both of my current armies are majority T3, which is painfully easy to kill. The lore behind the fnp on my army is still being refined. Maybe if I explain my modeling ideas then the lore might be easier to think up.

The models themselves will be bleached bone armor w/ black robes. Images and engravings of winged skeletons (think Death) adorn vehicles and shoulders, and their armor is going to have a more knightly appearance (something between grey knights and black templars, kinda like a robed company champion). I am leaning towards something like a chapter or company that survived some sort of disaster with chaos, and uses their armor and heraldry to mourn and respect their fallen predecessors, as well as inspire fear as they stalk like death towards their doomed foes. I have in mind to use the rules of vanilla marines and grey knights allied together, but modeled as one force on the table (the grey knight models will be modified to make it easy to identify them, so less confusion with opponents). I am really looking forward to playing with this army, but it is primarily more for the hobby side of the game, to make higher quality painted and converted models and develop a fun and rich story for narrative games and apocalypse settings, while Tau remains my primary competitive army (until we get nerfed hard in the new edition lol).

Maybe that will help with what I'm looking for =)

btw- I've been doing some reading and research on lexicanum and 40k-wiki like you guys have suggested. I've come across some cool ideas, and should help develop a really fun story once I figure out what kind of direction I should take.

The only problem with using vanilla marines and grey knights together is that they aren't Battle Brothers so to have them be one cohesive army would be difficult. They wouldn't be able to use cross psyker powers. Its been a difficult part of being a GK player but we work around it. I still have Eldar allies of convenience that work well together and I am working on my own SM allies as well but I am bringing an Inquisitor from the Inquisition codex to tie the two forces together.

Your look for the chapter is interesting but seems like it would be expensive. I know that the Black Templars have some knight helmets in their kits but I don't know how many but they do have a good amount of those robes. Dark Angels also have a great amount of robes. And the Grey Knights have the biggest source of knight like helmets but their kits are expensive monetary wise and I couldn't seeing buying them just for the helmets. The other problem is that all three of the kits already have patterns on their paldrons so unless you were looking to using a similar chapter symbol that could also be hard.

Just have them led by an Inquisitor of the Ordo Chronos, and never offer any other explanation.

I'm using the company champion shoulders, and I'm buying most of the bits from a friend who used to play GK, or from ebay or something. In our apocalypse setting, allies of convenience count as battle brothers for scoring and casting purposes, thus the vanilla and gk allies. This army won't be used in standard games, and when it is it'll primarily be bike or terminator spam, so not too worried about casting issues. As far as how expensive the army will be, I'm not too worried about it as I'll only be doing about a squad a month or so. I really wanna take my time and have fun converting and painting this army. Also, depending on how hard my eldar or tau get nerfed in this new edition I'll probably be selling a good chunk of em to fund this new endeavor.

That is being a bit pessimistic isn't it? There is nothing saying that Tau and Eldar are getting nerfed, there just might be some buffs to help the rest of us.

I should clarify, my playstyle will get nerfed. I love sms and stripping cover, and my lists usually focus on that before hitting with high ap weapons for maximum kills vs points spent. The rumored nerf to ignores cover is going to really force me to restructure my mentality about tau. And the rumored psychic changes will slow down eldar hard, and since psychic powers is the only reason I have eldar, it makes it less worth the points. Maybe I'll get lucky and my armies won't lose too much, but I'm preparing for the worst.

See, my play style with my GK is about to get enhanced. Not only are they finally bringing back assault which makes GK more effective with their shoot and then assault tactics but the new psychic changes will benefit me highly since every single unit in my army is a psyker which means I can generate so many warp charges. I can see why you are considering at least partially using GK.

I've always enjoyed their fluff and models, but didn't like the generic feel of sm armies in 4th, and gk wasn't much different. When they got the 5th ed codex I regretted not going to them, and I'm not going to make the same mistake again lol. I'm pretty sure I have a solid start to my fluff thanks to all of your input, and it's greatly appreciated. Now it's time to start modelling