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I remember reading that certain chaos warbands decided to try to clone Horus, and that the resulting clones were disapointing, brain dead or stark raving mad due to the emperor's total psykic annihilation of the original Horus.

So the question is, why not clone one of the primarchs that wasnt annihilated psykically by the emperor. Kurze? A second Angron?


What about the loyalists. Is there something wrong with having a living Ferrus Mannis, or more than just a fist of Rogal Dorn? Why dont they try to bring any of them back.

It would risk creating more Daemon Primarchs. The Imperium does not need more uberpowerful monsters out for it's blood.

 TheCustomLime wrote:
It would risk creating more Daemon Primarchs. The Imperium does not need more uberpowerful monsters out for it's blood.

but then why wouldnt chaos do it?

Lack of knowledge/It would piss off the wrong people/They wouldn't come out right.

Also primarchs are very complex, took the emproor to make them and no one fully understands how he engineered marines, can make them but not engineer them from stage one yet alone primarchs to point of cloning them and making one that's not mad, defective or just a failed.

The original Primarchs are suggested in some HH novels to be Daemons of sorts. The Emperor crafted the bodies and then bargained (or stole) power from the Chaos Gods to give them life and minds.
Horus was obliterated as you say OP, and so there is no "soul" to put back in a body. If you were to clone Kurze it may work but may not due to his apparent death at the hands of a Callidus Assassin. The C'tan Sword may prevent this. If you were to clone Alpharius Omegon, if one is dead, it may work.

As for loyalists; I doubt there is any Primarch souls to put in the bodies. The originals' would have been eaten or obliterated by the Dark Gods and I doubt they would create more.

 Exergy wrote:
I remember reading that certain chaos warbands decided to try to clone Horus, and that the resulting clones were disapointing, brain dead or stark raving mad due to the emperor's total psykic annihilation of the original Horus.

So the question is, why not clone one of the primarchs that wasnt annihilated psykically by the emperor. Kurze? A second Angron?


What about the loyalists. Is there something wrong with having a living Ferrus Mannis, or more than just a fist of Rogal Dorn? Why dont they try to bring any of them back.

Because it would be HERESY!
VILE HERESY!

 Deadshot wrote:

Horus was obliterated as you say OP, and so there is no "soul" to put back in a body. If you were to clone Kurze it may work but may not due to his apparent death at the hands of a Callidus Assassin. The C'tan Sword may prevent this. If you were to clone Alpharius Omegon, if one is dead, it may work.

well given that Kurze let the assassin kill him, he might not want to come back. Night Lords do what they want.

I just assume that if they had tried with Horus, why not try with the others?

Hell, what if Chaos had enough DNA from one of the loyalists? I could see Fulgrim cloning his old friend Ferrus and seeing what happens. There has to be some sick pleasure in it.

Fulgrim doesn't know jack about the science of genetics. He's a warrior, not a doctor. The only one on that team that would have a chance of doing it is Fabius, but whether or not he would is an entirely different matter.

Pay him ernough he might, chaos is one thing, but slaves, kit and such items he may be peursaded to lend his skills, every sadistic mad man needs a good supply of fodder to experiment on.

Indeed, but his price tends to be... exhorbitant. It may be that the various Traitor Legions (or what remains of them) simply can't meet the price, or can't justify the price on a chance that the clone would be viable or useful.

Could also be that the remaining Daemon Primarchs don't want any more competition of their caliber for the favor of the Ruinous Powers, and so have proscribed such attempts amongst their followers (mortal and otherwise), so all that's left to get the scratch together are the miscellaneous warbands.

Even if it was possible (and it really isn't, given that their warp quality made them uniques)..

The Imperium doesn't want an uncontrollable force with the strenght and the charisma of a demigod between their ranks. And Chaos already has their own Daemon Primarchs so to speak.

If it was this easy or auspicable for The Imperium, they would have just cloned The Big E.

As said though fulgrim is one messed up chap, what's more fun than primarch level people to duel on your pleasure planet.

The ultimate oponant and all that.
A deamon primarch is not short on resources and power to indulge there crazy and unprintble desires.

True chaos is all rivalry, so much infighting has kept impirium alive this long, some warbands have become very powerful and rich though, huron started with a small start n now has one of largest fleets and forces, honsou started with a smaller force than he built.

I think the logic is the same as a Space Marine - their DNA is fundamentally human and their superhuman abilities come from modifications thereafter. Just because it's biotechnology doesn't mean that their DNA has to be specifically altered, in the same sense that a cyborg's DNA is not.

I think perhaps that it wasn't so simple as genetically engineering them and that the Emperor only altered their DNA so far as to make them receptive to the processes and implants that would follow.

Also, without sorcery to move souls around, cloning is not resurrection. It is possible that the clones of Horus were crazy because they were attempting to implant Horus' actual soul into cloned bodies and failed, but it's also possible that that engineered DNA (the "base" of a Primarch, so to speak) doesn't result in anything that could be considered a normal human.

There is also the fact that what the Primarchs were... that is, the people that we know them as... were products of the various planets they were tossed to as infants. We don't have any "blank slate" Primarchs, so it is impossible to determine how much of what they were was Nature versus how much of them was Nurture.

It's not impossible. Most of the stuff that their homes changed is cosmetic - skin, hair, eye colour - and their personalities. We know that The Emperor created them to be big and strong.

By "base", I mean that The Emperor designed and engineered an altered human genome. These altered humans would then be subjected to a number of procedures (if we assume they are like Space Marines, which is logical, then this would involve a great deal of artificial organ implantation) that would endow them with the ability to grow as big and strong as he wanted. So a Primarch would be created by implanting the "blank" superhuman with superior versions of Space Marine organs, causing them to grow into the Primarchs we know.

This is really the only suitable explanation as to why you can't just clone a Primarch. If The Emperor engineered their DNA just to be Primarchs, then cloning them would be easy. Even assuming that Primarchs have all these Warp-powers doesn't make sense, because he would have to have engineered that in the beginning (we know that Warp-power can be genetic, as there have been multiple instances of xenos with natural Warp powers). If The Emperor created "Primarch DNA", it would be a simple matter of just copying his work.

It's not impossible. Most of the stuff that their homes changed is cosmetic - skin, hair, eye colour - and their personalities. We know that The Emperor created them to be big and strong.

Angron would not be Angron if he had not ended up on Nuceria. Magnus would not be Magnus if not for Prospero. Russ would most certainly not have been Russ had it not been for Fenris.

By "base", I mean that The Emperor designed and engineered an altered human genome.

So the Emperor genetically altered the material that would be grown into the Primarchs, but the recipients of their gene-seed are not genetically altered to accept it?

This is really the only suitable explanation as to why you can't just clone a Primarch. If The Emperor engineered their DNA just to be Primarchs, then cloning them would be easy. Even assuming that Primarchs have all these Warp-powers doesn't make sense, because he would have to have engineered that in the beginning (we know that Warp-power can be genetic, as there have been multiple instances of xenos with natural Warp powers). If The Emperor created "Primarch DNA", it would be a simple matter of just copying his work.

You would need access to his work... his files, his records, his materials and laboratories... to do this. The Imperial Palace has been bombed the gak out of at least twice in Imperial history. It is likely that these materials are no longer available. We do know that the remaining material that made the Traitor Legions is under a time-lock seal, but that's not quite Primarch level. We also know that the Chaos Gods had a hand in their creation, so it may be that there's a bit of Chaos Magic involved in making it happen, and that is available at a price no one is willing to pay.

Angron would not be "Angron", but he would be genetically identical.

We know that humans are used to make Space Marines. We also know that The Emperor created the Primarchs, he didn't alter living humans to do it. While it's entirely possible, even likely, that the Primarchs have altered DNA, we know that the Space Marines do not (following my argument as put forth in that other thread we are discussing a very similar topic in).

As for copying his work, I was referring to taking a cell sample from any Primarch and simply cloning it. If Primarchs had "Primarch DNA", this would be easy. If Primarchs were altered to accept their organs as I said, then cloning them would merely create the "altered base", rather than the Primarch himself.

But genetic-clone-Angron is not Angron, Primarch of the World Eaters. It's just a dude that looks like him.

Same thing with Magnus, who could (like his father) alter his shape and size pretty much at will, not to mention other psychic manipulations of his form. Gods only know what Magus *really* looked like.

In the end, if all you're doing is creating genetic clones of the Primarchs, you're not getting the real deal. You might end up getting the people that the Emperor intended to get... but on the other hand, perhaps the Emperor had another plan in mind, a way of raising them to be what he wanted them to be, but if so, no records of that plan exist.

Oh, I know that. But why would it matter, unless you were actually trying to copy them? I would think that the main goal behind creating more Primarchs is to have giant superwarriors, not copies of 40k celebrities.

EDIT: Except in the case of cloning Horus, because they were actually trying to bring him back. Right?

That seemed to be the intent with Horus 2.0...
... but there are much easier ways to get super-human warriors without the trouble of trying to clone the Primarchs, especially because what you'd really end up with is just a slightly-above-average Space Marine.

There are all kinds of Daemons you could host into a regular CSM to get the same or better effect, without all the mucking about with Science. Magic is just so much easier and more efficient.

If you could reliably mass-produce Primarch-level footsoldiers, it would be pretty nice. You'd have to arm and armour them, though, but that's something else.

Outside of the lasgun and the skull-making machine, I dont think *any* technology in M41 can be described as "reliable". Let's be serious here.

You could tweak the skull-machine into producing skull-men. You could give them skull-swords and skull-armour and send them to take skulls for the Skull God. So basically how Space Marines are made.

Pretty sure skull-men are called Skull Servitors.

The Imperium has experimented with clones in the past.

The Afriel Strain experiment was intended to create an army of Macharius-level Warmasters. While the clones were viable, they showed none of the genius or spark of the original - they were just ordinary men and women.

They could recreate the body, if they had a large enough genetic sample. But they can't bring the spirit back into it. It wouldn't be the Primarch - just a primarch-shaped person.

As shown by the Horus Heresy, the primarchs can't be trusted.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
The Imperium has experimented with clones in the past.

The Afriel Strain experiment was intended to create an army of Macharius-level Warmasters. While the clones were viable, they showed none of the genius or spark of the original - they were just ordinary men and women.

They could recreate the body, if they had a large enough genetic sample. But they can't bring the spirit back into it. It wouldn't be the Primarch - just a primarch-shaped person.

What if you had an army of Primarchs and they lacked the character to lead an army. Imagine if Abaddon had an army of Horus' that followed his command. Or an army of Angrons, or god-forbid, Magnus with his powers.

 Deadshot wrote:

 Furyou Miko wrote:
The Imperium has experimented with clones in the past.

The Afriel Strain experiment was intended to create an army of Macharius-level Warmasters. While the clones were viable, they showed none of the genius or spark of the original - they were just ordinary men and women.

They could recreate the body, if they had a large enough genetic sample. But they can't bring the spirit back into it. It wouldn't be the Primarch - just a primarch-shaped person.

What if you had an army of Primarchs and they lacked the character to lead an army. Imagine if Abaddon had an army of Horus' that followed his command. Or an army of Angrons, or god-forbid, Magnus with his powers.

There's a big part of the truth here, although it's not entirely accurate. The Imperium has experimented with both cloning and genetic engineering on a much more humble scale and it has always ended in failure. The Afriel Strain is actually one of their MOST successful, and the soldiers DID exhibit abnormally high skill levels, but they also seemed to be cursed. Horrible things happened to every single Afriel Strain regiment and they've all pretty much died to a man. For superstitious Imperial commanders, that isn't something that makes them want to get involved. Then there's the cursed 21st founding (not cloning, but DNA tampering in a similar vein), which went even worse and was actually corrupted by Bile himself. If those modest attempts have gone wrong, how much more horribly could cloning a Primarch go wrong? And the Imperium is superstitious and fearful of new technology by nature. Those experiments were all done in secret by radical Inquisitors. The Mechanicus would never go for it.

Chaos on the other hand doesn't care, but for them it's a problem of skill. Creating a being like the Emperor is basically Fabius Bile's life's work. But he hasn't succeeded yet, and he's by far the most skilled geneticist alive today, except perhaps for the Haemonculi. He tried to clone Horus, but the clone was killed by Abaddon, and he seems to have regarded it as failure. The clone was probably defective. He has successfully cloned Space Marines, and is the only one who has successfully done so, however, his process seems to have "kinks" that saner individuals would consider unsuitable. Bile's "new men" seem to all be sociopathic, more than a bit crazy, and prone to genetic meltdowns. And cloning a Primarch is implied to be much harder then cloning normal Astartes. Perhaps their DNA is more complex, so there's more chance for defects to get into the code during the cloning process, producing nothing more than a mindless monstrosity or big pile of goo. Bile has come the closest but hasn't succeeded, and no other servant of Chaos is nearly is skilled as he is in that field.

As the others have mentioned above, it would seem that cloning technology/science has regressed to the point that, for the factions that would be growing Primarchs, it's more prone to failures, or horrible monstrosities, than it is to anything even vaguely familiar with success.

Fabius Bile is, again. the foremost expert on the topic (and it is implied that he might have taught the Haemonunculi a thing or two), but, again, getting him to work on a project like this is... expensive.


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Also, you cant trust that sob, he might build you a perfect Primarch, but it's under his control, not yours, and then he uses it to take away your Chaos Castle.