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Heya guys,

Fairly new return into 40k, and am currently reading and learning everything I can. It's a really interesting universe!! The only actual novel I have done any reading of so far is the Eisenhorn novel Xenos but I have read a lot on the wiki and lexicanum sites.

A post in GD the other day about personal chapters led me to reading a few things about how to create a chapter and as creative writing is something I was known to do once upon a time I felt like it was something I wanted to give a go. So I read what I could find. I've spent the last couple of days with about 30 different pages across sites explaining lore and events in the 40k timeline and one really leapt out at me.

I came upon something known as The Imperial Truth.

Almost straight away I decided that I wanted the chapter I created in my fluff to be loyal to the emperor. However, after reading about the imperial truth it got stuck in my head that surely it would be possible for a chapter to be loyal to the emperor (at least as far as they knew) but have been out so long they'd still believe in it. That there were no gods, or daemons, or chaos.

The problem lies in the dates that this was changed. From what I can see, this message was stopped and classed as heretical sometime just before or during the Horus Heresy?

I read somewhere that GW has literally the entire second founding locked down tight, with every chapter created named. And that new chapters are much better suited being dropped into later foundings, however would this be the second founding? Or would it be before or after it? Would it be possible for a chapter to still exist that stuck true to this? And how would they get supplied? Would the Adeptus Mechanicus just simply refuse to outfit this group? Also, what geneseeds would have been used at this chapters creation? Would it still have been mostly UMs? Would they have been forgotten over the years?

This isn't a "sector so far away the news hasn't broken yet" kind of thing. It's simply that when they were created and sent out they were told this, and now it has changed but they haven't believed it.

I know this is personal fluff and therefore each and every one of my dudes could be the offspring of the emperor and Slaanesh if I really wanted, but I'd like it to kind of fit in and make some sense.

Sorry if this isn't the right place for this post, I know this place isn't for personal chapter fluff, but the pinned topic at the top does say this is the place for research which is what this is. If it is wrong, please move it or advise me as to where I can post this appropriately.

Thanks in advance

I'm not sure that a 'Chapter' could believe in the Imperial Truth, given that it dates from the pre-heresy era. No Marine Legion that went through the Heresy would be unaware of the nature of the warp, it ruined that innocence. Too many daemons on the battlefield, warp storms, and brethren spouting things about Chaos Gods. As a result, any subsequent chapters would also have been created aware of it, by pure virtue of the fact that the marines that made it up would have either been through the Heresy itself, or created subsequently to the Heresy and thus instructed accordingly.

the Imperial truth was pretty much totally eroded by the time of the second founding. But saying that, the space marines never adopted the emperor as a godhead (except the black templars and some others). I cna imagine a stubborn Chapter master sticking with it but.. they'd have to be pretty monumentally stubborn- the evidence for daemons is pretty overwhelming. I guess they can rationalise it as psycic warp xenos.

The idea of an isolated sector where the imperial truth took hold and was never touched by the Heresy/Scouring is kind of nice. Like an imperial utopia... they would not react well to meeting the modern imperium.


Another route would to be have a proper lost chapter- a pre-heresy legion ship thats been lsot in the warp an re-emerged.

Captyn_Bob wrote:
.

The idea of an isolated sector where the imperial truth took hold and was never touched by the Heresy/Scouring is kind of nice. Like an imperial utopia... they would not react well to meeting the modern imperium.


Another route would to be have a proper lost chapter- a pre-heresy legion ship thats been lsot in the warp an re-emerged.

My biggest problem with the imperial utopia sector is that surely during the heresy the entire imperium was called upon to fight, and any legions of marines there would have been called into battle. Also, the chances of chaos just leaving that sector alone seem rather slim.

As for the lost in the warp part, I debated it for a brief period, but it just seemed a little mary-sue to me. "ZOMGZ this is a pre-heresy legion lost in the warp who just so happened to have reappeared right now isn't that totes amazeballs!!!!!1!" just falls a little too neatly for me personally. I'd be more inclined to go with a secluded sector that the Emperor wasn't aware had been reached by his legions, but how likely would that really be?

 Ketara wrote:
I'm not sure that a 'Chapter' could believe in the Imperial Truth, given that it dates from the pre-heresy era. No Marine Legion that went through the Heresy would be unaware of the nature of the warp, it ruined that innocence. Too many daemons on the battlefield, warp storms, and brethren spouting things about Chaos Gods. As a result, any subsequent chapters would also have been created aware of it, by pure virtue of the fact that the marines that made it up would have either been through the Heresy itself, or created subsequently to the Heresy and thus instructed accordingly.

Right, so they wouldn't be a chapter as such, just part of a legion from the old times? Because it would basically need to be a group of space marines that somehow completely avoided the entirety of the heresy all together. That definitely sounds a little more far-fetched than what I was hoping for. I knew I'd be bending timelines and rules a bit, but I didn't want to fully break them.

Eladar wrote:

My biggest problem with the imperial utopia sector is that surely during the heresy the entire imperium was called upon to fight, and any legions of marines there would have been called into battle. Also, the chances of chaos just leaving that sector alone seem rather slim.

As for the lost in the warp part, I debated it for a brief period, but it just seemed a little mary-sue to me. "ZOMGZ this is a pre-heresy legion lost in the warp who just so happened to have reappeared right now isn't that totes amazeballs!!!!!1!" just falls a little too neatly for me personally. I'd be more inclined to go with a secluded sector that the Emperor wasn't aware had been reached by his legions, but how likely would that really be?

Ketara wrote:I'm not sure that a 'Chapter' could believe in the Imperial Truth, given that it dates from the pre-heresy era. No Marine Legion that went through the Heresy would be unaware of the nature of the warp, it ruined that innocence. Too many daemons on the battlefield, warp storms, and brethren spouting things about Chaos Gods. As a result, any subsequent chapters would also have been created aware of it, by pure virtue of the fact that the marines that made it up would have either been through the Heresy itself, or created subsequently to the Heresy and thus instructed accordingly.

Right, so they wouldn't be a chapter as such, just part of a legion from the old times? Because it would basically need to be a group of space marines that somehow completely avoided the entirety of the heresy all together. That definitely sounds a little more far-fetched than what I was hoping for. I knew I'd be bending timelines and rules a bit, but I didn't want to fully break them.

You could call them a chapter by pure virtue of being led by a 'Chapter Master', a high ranking Marine in one of the Legions. But no Space Marine Chapter of a thousand marines pre-heresy would have just gone off the radar and not bothered trying to make contact with their primarch for ten thousand years.

The warp explanation is a little overused, but something along those lines would be the most believable you could get. It doesn't have to be the warp necessarily, it could be that they were trapped in Eldar stasis field during the crusade or something else equally inventive. The key trick really, is to come up with a way in which they could have been isolated from time during the Pre-Heresy era, and suddenly released at this exact moment. The legion chosen would dictate their reaction. Ultramarines for example, would be immediately welcomed back into the fold (after careful examination to ensure they were not tainted) and would weep at the feet of their frozen Primarch. Space Wolves would be in a similar position, especially if Bjorn could vouch for them.

A unit of White Scars might prove less amenable to coming under the command of an upstart chapter master however, especially if the Khan isn't around to give orders. A traitor legion could have an even more interesting story to follow. Imagine a unit of Thousand Sons, committed to the Imperial Truth and Enlightenment suddenly being told that they wield magics and their Primarch has ascended to a twisted Godhood. That they are traitors, and their psychic powers curses. Where would they go? What would they do? How would the Imperium react? What happens when they fall back to an old Thousand Sons base and find it occupied by Blood Ravens? etcetc

I think the other problem is that the "truth" they believe in is not only a "lie" but that the evidence of its fallacy is so ever present in the world / galaxy / universe about them?

You could have it as some sort of secret belief of the Chapter - especially if they are actually descended from a pre-Heresy Legion

or perhaps a later founded Chapter discovered (or where shown the "Truth" perhas by one of the Fallen, an Inquisitor, Scholar, heretic priest of the Emperor for unknown reasons )

Some Chapters have very little contact with the wider Imperium - these marines may see it as corrupt but the alteratives (Chaos, Xenos) as worse - sothey keep their secret belief and attempt to do what they can to elminate the enemies of the Imperium so that when its safe the "truth" can be safely revealed.........

or Tzeentch did it............

 Ketara wrote:

You could call them a chapter by pure virtue of being led by a 'Chapter Master', a high ranking Marine in one of the Legions. But no Space Marine Chapter of a thousand marines pre-heresy would have just gone off the radar and not bothered trying to make contact with their primarch for ten thousand years.

The warp explanation is a little overused, but something along those lines would be the most believable you could get. It doesn't have to be the warp necessarily, it could be that they were trapped in Eldar stasis field during the crusade or something else equally inventive. The key trick really, is to come up with a way in which they could have been isolated from time during the Pre-Heresy era, and suddenly released at this exact moment. The legion chosen would dictate their reaction. Ultramarines for example, would be immediately welcomed back into the fold (after careful examination to ensure they were not tainted) and would weep at the feet of their frozen Primarch. Space Wolves would be in a similar position, especially if Bjorn could vouch for them.

A unit of White Scars might prove less amenable to coming under the command of an upstart chapter master however, especially if the Khan isn't around to give orders. A traitor legion could have an even more interesting story to follow. Imagine a unit of Thousand Sons, committed to the Imperial Truth and Enlightenment suddenly being told that they wield magics and their Primarch has ascended to a twisted Godhood. That they are traitors, and their psychic powers curses. Where would they go? What would they do? How would the Imperium react? What happens when they fall back to an old Thousand Sons base and find it occupied by Blood Ravens? etcetc

My main problem with using the warp was that it just seemed like a bit of a "get out of jail free" card. Don't want to have to come up with a reason for something? Claim it's due to the warp. At the same time, the warp could in theory do all of this stuff, and that is why it is so widely used. It's one of those things that can be a great tool in the right hands, and a crutch in the wrong ones. So basically it comes down to finding a plausible reason why 1000 marines went off the radar and didn't contact their primarch for over 10,000 years, and upon making contact with the imperium they didn't return back to holy Terra immediately in order to throw themselves at his grave. Although I'm sure they'd get absolutely nowhere near Terra or even Mars.

A possibly stupid question with regards to this. I know time passes differently in the warp. But is it possible they didn't even know they were in the warp? And they believe a handful of years or maybe even months have passed, but in reality it's been the 10,000 years that need to be accounted for? Just spitballing a few ideas here.

The way you talk about the traitor legion here sounds interesting. And again, it's only something I want to avoid as I've seen a lot of bad fanfics and fluffs where people have just gone "I want my spessie to do something no spessie ever would.... they can be traitors then!" But you have shown me that done right, with the right spin it could be a really interesting story. But surely even a traitorous legion would be distraught at discovering their primarch gone. Especially if they still believed in the imperial truth.

I'm not sure I'd want the legion just welcomed back into the fold. Part of the reason I liked the idea was that the culture shock would be massive, and how would they evolve? Would they adapt to the new things they learned or would they try and stick to the truth and brand everyone else heretics of the highest order? Maybe the imperium would be willing to welcome them back, but they don't believe the imperium any more as they don't hold to the truth.

In Lord of the Night - a Commander of the Night Lords is imprisoned in a stais field by the Eldar and only wakes up in modern times - he has no idea how much time has passed .

Perhaps someone (or thing) preserved them in a simlar manner for a reason - or even beacuse they could or for no reason at all....

The galaxy is a big place. Lets say a primarch orders a chapter of his legion to guard somewhere.important/dangerous (there are numerous examples of this). Maybe its a secret they want to protect, so the wider imperium doesn't know about it. The heresy hits, a big ol ruinstorm cuts off all communications.. and the chapter never gets the recall order. Ever.

A sane commander would send for backup, but if the orders were specifically 'stay there' then that would be breaching orders, and some commanders Will Not Do That (again numerous examples).

So its entirely possible that a chapter could be 'lost'. Their astropaths all die (they have a short life span anyway), When they start to age, without the ability to make new marines, then they take shifts in statis. Or maybe they had an apothecarium and the ability to make new recruits.

A local warp storm, or just bad luck, could prevent the imperium proper from reaching them for 10,000 years.

 Mr Morden wrote:
I think the other problem is that the "truth" they believe in is not only a "lie" but that the evidence of its fallacy is so ever present in the world / galaxy / universe about them?

You could have it as some sort of secret belief of the Chapter - especially if they are actually descended from a pre-Heresy Legion

or perhaps a later founded Chapter discovered (or where shown the "Truth" perhas by one of the Fallen, an Inquisitor, Scholar, heretic priest of the Emperor for unknown reasons )

Some Chapters have very little contact with the wider Imperium - these marines may see it as corrupt but the alteratives (Chaos, Xenos) as worse - sothey keep their secret belief and attempt to do what they can to elminate the enemies of the Imperium so that when its safe the "truth" can be safely revealed.........

or Tzeentch did it............

Surely to anyone who is fiercely loyal to the emperor and believes in the imperial truth, telling them the emperor is a god now is just a bad idea. They're gonna be pretty pd. Would they go "lesser evil" or would they go "right, let's kill everything we see!!"

Captyn_Bob wrote:
The galaxy is a big place. Lets say a primarch orders a chapter of his legion to guard somewhere.important/dangerous (there are numerous examples of this). Maybe its a secret they want to protect, so the wider imperium doesn't know about it. The heresy hits, a big ol ruinstorm cuts off all communications.. and the chapter never gets the recall order. Ever.

A sane commander would send for backup, but if the orders were specifically 'stay there' then that would be breaching orders, and some commanders Will Not Do That (again numerous examples).

So its entirely possible that a chapter could be 'lost'. Their astropaths all die (they have a short life span anyway), When they start to age, without the ability to make new marines, then they take shifts in statis. Or maybe they had an apothecarium and the ability to make new recruits.

A local warp storm, or just bad luck, could prevent the imperium proper from reaching them for 10,000 years.

Ok, so I actually really really like this idea. I think purely due to the timespan they would have needed to have a way to create other marines (I'm not sure of marine lifespan, but 10,000 years seems pretty ridiculously long), would they need an apothecarium for this or would they have other ways? But this also opens the door for an infight amongst the group due to some believing they should try and contact their primarch, but others insisting they were told to wait and should not breach those orders. This resulted in the more stubborn and order followers perhaps slaying the astropaths in advance in order to prevent communication until their primarch sends backup directly to them.

There's been some really great ideas here for me to look into and research more though guys. The first couple of posts left me thinking this might not be possible, but now there are a few ways it seemingly might be again!!

Eladar wrote:
My main problem with using the warp was that it just seemed like a bit of a "get out of jail free" card. Don't want to have to come up with a reason for something? Claim it's due to the warp. At the same time, the warp could in theory do all of this stuff, and that is why it is so widely used. It's one of those things that can be a great tool in the right hands, and a crutch in the wrong ones. So basically it comes down to finding a plausible reason why 1000 marines went off the radar and didn't contact their primarch for over 10,000 years, and upon making contact with the imperium they didn't return back to holy Terra immediately in order to throw themselves at his grave. Although I'm sure they'd get absolutely nowhere near Terra or even Mars.

A possibly stupid question with regards to this. I know time passes differently in the warp. But is it possible they didn't even know they were in the warp? And they believe a handful of years or maybe even months have passed, but in reality it's been the 10,000 years that need to be accounted for? Just spitballing a few ideas here.

To my knowledge, the only way to enter the warp is if you deliberately initiate warp travel, or if you fall into some sort of warp rift, like the Eye of Terror. The problem with the idea of them not being aware of them being in the warp is that they would need some sort of Geller field, or warp protection to prevent them from being torn apart by daemons. And bar being on a spaceship, there's no reason for them to have that sort of protection, because if they adhere to the Imperial Truth, they wouldn't believe it necessary.

But you're right, the warp can be an easy plot twist. I'd say to stick with stasis fields.

Eladar wrote:
I'm not sure I'd want the legion just welcomed back into the fold. Part of the reason I liked the idea was that the culture shock would be massive, and how would they evolve? Would they adapt to the new things they learned or would they try and stick to the truth and brand everyone else heretics of the highest order? Maybe the imperium would be willing to welcome them back, but they don't believe the imperium any more as they don't hold to the truth.
Ok, so I actually really really like this idea. I think purely due to the timespan they would have needed to have a way to create other marines (I'm not sure of marine lifespan, but 10,000 years seems pretty ridiculously long), would they need an apothecarium for this or would they have other ways? But this also opens the door for an infight amongst the group due to some believing they should try and contact their primarch, but others insisting they were told to wait and should not breach those orders. This resulted in the more stubborn and order followers perhaps slaying the astropaths in advance in order to prevent communication until their primarch sends backup directly to them.

Marines are effectively immortal, but they do physically age to an extent. There was a case I believe of the Space Wolves(?) finding a Marine thousands of years old who had physically fused with his chair. A thousand years would be conceivable, but without a stasis field, the warp, or some amazing new bio-technology not in the fluff, ten thousand years is too much for anything that isn't in a dreadnought or a Primarch.

I suspect that the best way to do things would be to combine the concepts. Let me try and come up with a general storyline for you to build on.

Our Marines volunteered pre-Heresy to guard something for their Primarch. They were frozen in stasis along with the item to act as guards until the Primarch returned, on the assumption that any thief would have to unfreeze them to gain access to it (some sort of superweapon? Artifact? STC machine?). We're now ten thousand years on though, and the Primarch never returned. The power supply for the stasis field fizzles out, and the marines emerge to a blasted ruin of a world around them.

They board their ship, and after much effort, manage to get spacebound. They head for their home system, only to be baffled by the changes that have occurred. Depending on your marines origin, their reaction would now vary. On the assumption that they are loyalist (to prevent the Imperium from just blasting them out the sky), following your wish to have them not be the type to just reintegrate willingly, and working with Primarchs least likely to have returned, our mysterious marines are likely to be either White Scars, Blood Angels, Iron Hands, or Salamanders.

Ferrus Manus and Sanguinius were slain in the Heresy, and Khan/Vulkan are imprisoned. Iron Hands would be least likely to believe things about warpcraft, and Scars are most likely to rock the boat with regards to doing their own thing, so I personally would go with one of them.

Alas, our mysterious space machine chapter have an added complication to their motives and actions. With their Primarch dead/gone, what are they to do with the item they were guarding? Depending on what it was, they could be very leery about just handing it over to the new Imperium, this strange faction that speaks of Godhood and magics.

That's what I've come up with after five minutes thought. It holds together reasonably well, and leaves you plenty of room to twist and turn it to whatever Legion/guarded item/relationship with the Imperium you want.

One thing to note that seems to have been overlooked is that the Imperial Truth did not actually deny the existence of warp entities (daemons).

It's made very clear that under the Imperial Truth, daemons were to be considered a type of xenos - an alien, not a daemon. So you could theoretically still cling to the Imperial Truth even if you'd been fending off attacks against your Gellar Field for ten thousand years subjective.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
One thing to note that seems to have been overlooked is that the Imperial Truth did not actually deny the existence of warp entities (daemons).

It's made very clear that under the Imperial Truth, daemons were to be considered a type of xenos - an alien, not a daemon. So you could theoretically still cling to the Imperial Truth even if you'd been fending off attacks against your Gellar Field for ten thousand years subjective.

Yep, just reread what I saw, I definitely overlooked that part and just assumed that daemons were also denied. This in my opinion helps with the believeability a bit as my guys could well have been battling the odd breakout of them during the heresy but just thought they were other xenos.

My question about how they could have recruited new marines still stands, would they have just needed an apothecary? Also, if I'm going to be one of the old legions, or at least their descendants, were they created from geneseed in a similar way to the current marines? And were the geneseeds the same? Or were they direct from the primarch?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, if they were a legion as opposed to a modern chapter, would they strive to keep the 10,000 strong that legions were before being broken down into chapters? I guess this could be circumvented by claiming they were more of an elite or task force, and the primarch didn't send his entire legion off into the unknown without at least a scouting party.

Also, who provided their equipment? Was it the mechanicum before the Age of Strife? And before Mars went to hell and forced the creation of the Cult Mechanicus?

Your apothecary will need a large amount of technology to store and cultivate implants, but there's no reason why he couldn't look after all the geneseed issues if he had that tech.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Your apothecary will need a large amount of technology to store and cultivate implants, but there's no reason why he couldn't look after all the geneseed issues if he had that tech.

Well taking Ketara's example which kind of ties in with what I've been writing, and with the changes I've made following the advice here, it's fairly certain that the marines were protecting something in the name of their Primarch. I currently have it being advanced tech that is believe to have helped the Eldar when they were ruling the galaxy so Manus belives it would be able to help the Emperor in his great crusade. This tech is on another planet. So they must have travelled there by ship, even if not through the warp. Would that technology not have been available on a ship, especially as they were being sent off on a mission during the time of the great crusade where they may need to convince others they meet of the Impeial Truth??

It's possible that it might be present on a Battle Barge if it was part of their deployment remit. There are fleet-based chapters, after all.

Ever read Tau Zero? It's a quick amazing read that uses time dilation as it's hook. You could use that to easily explain the passage of time, though you would have to figure out how they got their ship up to near light speed levels without the warp. Or you could just make them Second or Eleventh legion and make up whatever you want for where they have been for so long (secret mission from the Emperor himself on the fringes of the galaxy, maybe he figured out how to access a parallel universe, etc.)

Another question tying into this timeline of events surrounding the imperial truth:

Was the Emperor going around denying the existence of the warp despite the fact he was powering the Astronomican? Or would mankind still have been using the Pharos?

The Emperor never denied the existence of the Warp.

He never even denied that the chaos gods existed.

He just denied that they were gods.

The Imperial Truth was that there are no gods. It was purely atheism.

Under the Imperial Truth, the warp exists, and is used for travel, and is populated by alien creatures. The fabric of reality in the warp is mutable, affected by the creatures - including humans - that dwell there, and there are many predators there.

Yeah, having reread about the imperial truth you are completely correct. I assumed it went more into denying the warp, which made little sense to me but then the imperial truth was flawed and blatantly a lie anyway. Emps knew full well that the chaos gods were most certainly gods, he just didn't want his people believing it, and he believed that humanity should span the galaxy as the dominant force.

With the warp still being recognised as something for travel through, but it just contains different species of xenos within, does that mean that the astronomican would still have been used as the means of navigation? I've not found an awful lot of evidence as to which order certain things happened in that far back.

The Astronomican is used to navigate as a fixed point. It works similar to old-school navigation... you could predict where you were by the moon and stars, you knew where a given fixed point was (like, say, London), and so you could triangulate from there to reach another destination.

The Astronomican functions as that "fixed point" while the systems of the ship are supposed to be able to tell you where you are currently located in relation to the nearest planet/nav buoy/space station, whatever. Then, the Navigator just triangulates the azimuth to the desire destination and pilots the ship through the Warp to reach that destination.

The other important thing, which the imperial truth denies, is that humans have souls, which can be eaten by daemons.

Understandably that little tidbit was intended to be kept under wraps.