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Ok, could it be possible there is only one missing primarch? Since something no one brings up it the fact that the alpha legion had two primarchs?

The two primarchs of Alpha legion are twins, the two missing primarchs had no connections to alpharius besides being created by the Emperor.

I forget which book from the HH mentions them, but there is a short passage that mentions the two "missing primarchs" and that they upset the Emperor and were destroyed as a result. I want to say the story was told to Magnus or Lorgar, but it's been quite some time since I read the story.

With all that said, there were two missing primarchs.

GreyChaos wrote:
I forget which book from the HH mentions them, but there is a short passage that mentions the two "missing primarchs" and that they upset the Emperor and were destroyed as a result. I want to say the story was told to Magnus or Lorgar, but it's been quite some time since I read the story.

With all that said, there were two missing primarchs.

It's from the The First Heretic, pg 163

"Two already lost." Lorgar looked back to the city. "I still recall how they-"

"Enough," warned Magnus. "Honour the oath you took that day".



So yea, it's confirmed that two Primarchs were already lost/purged at that point.

Can we seriously get a sticky about this subject. LOL there are several threads about this every week.

Time for me to make my mark on yet another one of these threads haha. Crusading and posting on threads like this: my only goals in life haha.

Question:

that one imperial guy wrote:Ok, could it be possible there is only one missing primarch? Since something no one brings up it the fact that the alpha legion had two primarchs?

Answer:

mrhappyface wrote:The two primarchs of Alpha legion are twins, the two missing primarchs had no connections to alpharius besides being created by the Emperor.

They probably had a bit more of a connection than that (depending on the circumstances of their "Disappearance"). But yeah, I'd have to go "No" on this as well. One of the things it always comes back to is the fac that all trace of them in Imperial Records has been expunged. If the Alpha Legion had anything to do with it, I get the feeling either some more details would exist than exist currently, or the records of the Alpha Legion wouldn't exist either. Plus don't the Alpha Legion have enough mystery with whether or not one of the Primarchs is dead, and if so, which one? haha


Other:

SickSix wrote:Can we seriously get a sticky about this subject. LOL there are several threads about this every week.

We probably do. I also get the feeling this would be a very long sticky haha

My guess is that the Legion of the damned is one of the fallen legions that is "Missing" the other one is....no idea

Originally the idea behind the two "Missing" legions was to give players the freedom to make their own chapter of space marines. one for chaos and one for imperial.

Personal head cannons with absolutely no evidence to back it up:

The first primarch was from a simple world that valued spiritualism (Tibetan monk style). The Emperor shows up and they're like "No, you walk a path of violence and hate, and we won't have anything to do with it." So naturally the Emperor forces them.
During the battle his son finds him, Emperor recognizes him as his son, but said son denounces him "There's always some fool, trying to rule the world!" They battle for a few days before finally the son gets behind the emperor kicks him in the air, then preforms as 200,646 hit combo, ending with him doing some Chi blast gak to send the emperor into space.
Primarch dies on reentry to his world's atmosphere.

Second one was on a world that survived through all the warp storms, psykers and other gak almost completely untouched, and were still at the peak of humanities old technology. When they encounter they were on their own great crusade to reunite humanity. At first they were diplomatic working together to make an alliance and later dissolve into one entity. But the Primarch wouldn't accept the emperor as his lord, and eventually talks started to break down and eventually broke out into a large scale war, which ended with the emperor having to snuff out the last old light.

Him and his son dueled on a moon alone where no one could intervene. It ended with the son surrendering and accepting his death. "All the power of humanity's technological progress, the apex of how far we've come, and I could only draw blood from a shallow wound against you."

Originally they were missing for two reasons:

1. The original roman legions were wiped out to a man, and the respective numbers were never used again
2. It gave players an excuse to make up their own legion- one for loyalists, one for chaos.

On that note, Primarch XI seems to be implied that he would have turned to chaos as in False Gods, Horus reflects about the "glories that would never come to pass" of the being in tank XI. Who knows, maybe he was an out-and-out chaos worshiping being by the time Big E found him. We all know the Emperor never majored in genetics as some of the primarchs seemed to have a flaw which manifested within their legion:

Blood Angels/Red thirst
Space Wolfs/Canis Helix and the Wulfen
Thousand Sons/Flesh Change

If one valued diplomacy and openly interacted with xenos, that would be cause to wipe the Primarch off the face of the Earth. Hell, I don't know what it would take for the Emperor to actually go "Know what son? I'm tired of your gak" -Magnus after the destruction of Terra's psychic defenses and ruining of the Golden Loo still didn't warrant a killing (unless the Emperor intended to kill Magnus personally, but it said that seeing Magnus appear in the Golden throne broke his heart...)

In all honesty it's one of the few mysteries that's still a mystery.

There are some pretty big hints in HH3: Extermination

SemperMortis wrote:
My guess is that the Legion of the damned is one of the fallen legions that is "Missing" the other one is....no idea

The Legion of the Damned are the Fire Hawks, a Cursed Founding Chapter.

Originally the idea behind the two "Missing" legions was to give players the freedom to make their own chapter of space marines. one for chaos and one for imperial.

It really wasn't. This is just something that players started assuming, and it doesn't actually make any sense. There would be no point in them being completely wiped from Imperial records if they were actually still running around.


The idea behind the missing legions was simply to add some mystery to the game's background. It worked...players have been debating it constantly for nearly 30 years.

The Canis Helix isn't a geneseed flaw, it's an intentional mutation. It's stated in one of the forgeworld books and in Deliverance Lost (I think), that the Wolves, the Salamanders and the Alpha legion, all had experimental deviations in their geneseed, though the why is unclear.

The lost legions have become a bit of a story telling faux pas for Black Library. When the whole heresy was told like a myth, like in the old background, then the Lost were just a cool, extra mystery, in a story that set the scene for the 41st millennium. When they started to flesh the story out, the 2 missing legions became a problem. Thanks to the Legion numbering system, GW can't just never mention them, but also they were unwilling to finally come up with a definitive answer on what their fate was (many fans also prefer the mystery). To make matters worse, they tease us with easter eggs about them, but that only makes their absence even more frustrating to those who want an answer.

I may be wrong but I also feel like BL have created time line issues. Laurie Golding has specifically stated that the 11th Primarch was found after Corax and before Alpharius, but this would put the purge about 30-20 years before the heresy, whereas the above mentioned quote from Lorgar, talks about their destruction almost 30 years before Corax was found.

It also irks me that none of the traitor Primarchs can just come out and talk about their lost brothers, when they have already spit on every other oath they have ever made, and two of them are Daemon Princes for feth sake. Wouldn't it be a great propaganda tool for Horus even? "Oh hey my dad is a tyrant who killed two of his sons, come join me instead?"

Personally think that they should have been retconned when the HH series was planned, or written in properly, instead of just this pretend mystery, which it seems apparent that they will never have an answer for.

Don't forget the whole "Forgotten" and "purged" nicknames, implying one simply disappeared and the other was wiped by the Wolves based on Prospero Burns.

Also, as KorPhaeron77 mentions, Lorgar's words put the loss of the legions 30 years before Corax's arrival, and Corax was 2nd to last to arrive, followed by Alpharius, so it can't be Omegon because they were together.


My personal headcannon is that the two legions were working together on some huge engagement, Ullanor size crusade with the two full Legions. The Primarch of the II Legion had been brought up Chaos but used his supreme psychic abilities to mask it, Magnus level abilities (each Primarch had a counterpart right? And Magnus was by far the best psyker). So when the Primarch of the XI Legion landed on this planet and was moments from discovering Chaos and its danger, #2 kills #11 and orders the destruction of the XI in a mini- Istvaan attack, where the XI make the first wave and once exhausted, the II strike and wipe them out. Leading to the XI Legion being "Forgotten" and the quote from Horus about "glories never to come to pass" being about how he was wiped out before he could really show his worth like him, Sanguinius, Guilliman, Dorn or the others.

As a result, the Space Wolves were tasked with destroying the II due to their corruption, and the Space Wolves already having Fenrisian Runes that made them resistant to Chaos, and they had natural psyker resistance as well due to their "native fenrisian magic powers," whch of course they weren't told about but the Emperor knew, regardless. The Space Wolves destroy them as they had been exhausted from fighting the XI, and purged them, leading to them being called "The Purged."

Afterwards the Emperor, fearing the knowledge of Chaos, and more importantly, that a Legion was purged for having a different religion, albeit a dangerous one, would corrupt the others, made them swear oaths on their Legions and honour and hundredfold to never speak of it, and at the same time, subtly taking the time to reinforce that "THERE ARE NO GODS."


My headcannon

 insaniak wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:
My guess is that the Legion of the damned is one of the fallen legions that is "Missing" the other one is....no idea

The Legion of the Damned are the Fire Hawks, a Cursed Founding Chapter.

That's only one of at three possibilities, it isn't a definite fact. There are striking similarities in their armour though.

 KorPhaeron77 wrote:
It also irks me that none of the traitor Primarchs can just come out and talk about their lost brothers, when they have already spit on every other oath they have ever made, and two of them are Daemon Princes for feth sake. Wouldn't it be a great propaganda tool for Horus even? "Oh hey my dad is a tyrant who killed two of his sons, come join me instead?".

I would expect that the Traitor Primarchs either don't talk about them simply because they don't have any particular reason to do so, or they do talk about them but just haven't yet done so in any of the fiction - 'on camera', as it were.

 insaniak wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:
Originally the idea behind the two "Missing" legions was to give players the freedom to make their own chapter of space marines. one for chaos and one for imperial.

It really wasn't. This is just something that players started assuming, and it doesn't actually make any sense. There would be no point in them being completely wiped from Imperial records if they were actually still running around.

Not to mention that the missing legions have been present in the background since the 1st edition of Epic Space Marine, years before it was established anywhere that only twenty legions had been founded (and indeed before all of the eighteen extant ones had been named).

As Insaniak says, there's just there to create some cheap mystery.

 Deadshot wrote:
Don't forget the whole "Forgotten" and "purged" nicknames, implying one simply disappeared and the other was wiped by the Wolves based on Prospero Burns.

Or, more simply, that each was purged, and then forgotten, which requires fewer assumptions in the interpretation of Malcador's words to Dorn.

 Lord Fishface wrote:

 insaniak wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:
Originally the idea behind the two "Missing" legions was to give players the freedom to make their own chapter of space marines. one for chaos and one for imperial.

It really wasn't. This is just something that players started assuming, and it doesn't actually make any sense. There would be no point in them being completely wiped from Imperial records if they were actually still running around.

Not to mention that the missing legions have been present in the background since the 1st edition of Epic Space Marine, years before it was established anywhere that only twenty legions had been founded (and indeed before all of the eighteen extant ones had been named).

As Insaniak says, there's just there to create some cheap mystery.

 Deadshot wrote:
Don't forget the whole "Forgotten" and "purged" nicknames, implying one simply disappeared and the other was wiped by the Wolves based on Prospero Burns.

Or, more simply, that each was purged, and then forgotten, which requires fewer assumptions in the interpretation of Malcador's words to Dorn.

No, they are known as "Forgotten" and Purged" RESPECTIVELY, not together. One is forgotten, the other is purged, neither are both known as both.

 that one imperial guy wrote:
Ok, could it be possible there is only one missing primarch? Since something no one brings up it the fact that the alpha legion had two primarchs?

It would be an interesting twist if Omegon was found separately and given his own a Legion and everything, then later cross paths with and ultimately joins forces with his twin. The Legion itself is lost either because the Primarchs directly destroy it to a man, or because they lead them on a wild goose chase to find their "missing" leader; either way the Emperor believes the Legion and Primarch to be gone for good and consequently wipes out their records.

Hmm, kinda interesting the II Legion is missing, and the Alpha Legion is the XX Legion; that is, the two represented by twin symbols...

 insaniak wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:
Originally the idea behind the two "Missing" legions was to give players the freedom to make their own chapter of space marines. one for chaos and one for imperial.

It really wasn't. This is just something that players started assuming, and it doesn't actually make any sense. There would be no point in them being completely wiped from Imperial records if they were actually still running around.

 Lord Fishface wrote:
Not to mention that the missing legions have been present in the background since the 1st edition of Epic Space Marine, years before it was established anywhere in the background that only twenty legions had been founded (and indeed before all of the eighteen extant ones had been named).

Also, why would players need the Lost Legions to create their own Space Marine Chapters? Players have been able to create their own Space Marine Chapters for as long as this game has existed without ever needing to rely on the Lost Legions. Plus it stretches the boundaries enough that Chapters descended from Traitor Legions (like the Blood Ravens) exist. Some people might consider it too much of a stretch to consider them successors of one of the Lost Legions, and I would (at least try to) call out anyone who thought they needed the two Lost Legions to create a Chapter.

 Lord Fishface wrote:

 Deadshot wrote:
Don't forget the whole "Forgotten" and "purged" nicknames, implying one simply disappeared and the other was wiped by the Wolves based on Prospero Burns.

Or, more simply, that each was purged, and then forgotten, which requires fewer assumptions in the interpretation of Malcador's words to Dorn.

But it's always kinda fun to try and read into things like that. Allows more speculation to happen.

 Deadshot wrote:
(each Primarch had a counterpart right?

I've never considered that each has a counterpart, but its an interesting theory. The obvious ones are Corax to Curze, Angron to Russ and Dorn to Perturabo. Maybe the Lion to the Twins. But who could be the counterpart to Sangy or Vulkan? Fulgrim is all about perfection but is that what Sangy is about, or more how others see him? And there are no other perpetuals to match Vulkan so does it become Ferrus Manus as both are blacksmiths?
Who could ever match the lameness of Lorgar?

 JustALittleOrkish wrote:

 Deadshot wrote:
(each Primarch had a counterpart right?

I've never considered that each has a counterpart, but its an interesting theory. The obvious ones are Corax to Curze, Angron to Russ and Dorn to Perturabo. Maybe the Lion to the Twins. But who could be the counterpart to Sangy or Vulkan? Fulgrim is all about perfection but is that what Sangy is about, or more how others see him? And there are no other perpetuals to match Vulkan so does it become Ferrus Manus as both are blacksmiths?
Who could ever match the lameness of Lorgar?

Well there was a primarchs that had connections or similarities. I can similarly draw similarities betweem Lion and Russ, or comparisons between Mortarian and Magnus (Nurgle, hates adornment, low key hates the Emperor, hates psykers vs Tzeentch, fancy armour and knowledge, likes the Emperor, obviously psykers). While Lorgar embraces Chaos and unleashes his psychic powers there is no one on Magnus' level, whereas each Primarch had a rival on par. Angron had Russ as a Berserker, Perturabo had Dorn as a siege master, Ferrus and Fulgrim as a blacksmith, Horus and Sanguinius as a leader and figurehead and an allround perfect Primarch, Lion and Guilliman as tacticians. Russ and Magnus are paired up because of the Propsero thing and their rivalry but they are not exactly opposites or similar.

Hence my theory is that one of the lost is a powerful, Alpha++ psyker like magnus

 insaniak wrote:
It really wasn't. This is just something that players started assuming, and it doesn't actually make any sense. There would be no point in them being completely wiped from Imperial records if they were actually still running around.

The idea behind the missing legions was simply to add some mystery to the game's background. It worked...players have been debating it constantly for nearly 30 years.

Yep. If I remember correctly from one of Priestly's interviews, the original intent was that the two 'lost' legions had initially taken part in the Heresy but later went back to the Emperor's side, and the act of deleting all their records was actually done in order to erase all traces of their original betrayal, since they had redeemed themselves. I'd swear it was something like that, although it's late at night here and I may also be imagining things.

In any case, as with so many other things in 40k, the joke was lost to the new writers that came later. I don't understand why people even bother to give the BL novels so many afterthoughts, when all those books just form an incredibly convoluted, contradictory and incoherent mess, with each author writing pretty much what they want and how they want.

 JustALittleOrkish wrote:

 Deadshot wrote:
(each Primarch had a counterpart right?

I've never considered that each has a counterpart, but its an interesting theory. The obvious ones are Corax to Curze, Angron to Russ and Dorn to Perturabo. Maybe the Lion to the Twins. But who could be the counterpart to Sangy or Vulkan? Fulgrim is all about perfection but is that what Sangy is about, or more how others see him? And there are no other perpetuals to match Vulkan so does it become Ferrus Manus as both are blacksmiths?
Who could ever match the lameness of Lorgar?

They can be viewed as opposites to each, some are a little more tenuous than others, and a complete pairing means moving a couple of "obvious" pairings being separated. Here is one way of pairing them, if it needs doing at all, and I don't mean this to come across as "correct", feel free to amend it to strengthen the pairings;

Dorn/Horus (overall campaign strategy)
Gulliman/Lorgar (Empire building and establishing loyalty)
Corax/Alpharius (stealth/covert tactics)
Lion/Perturabo (grand strategy, not great at making friends)
Vulkan/Mortarion (opposites in decor, both immune to specific weaponry)
Ferrus/Fulgrim (perfection in function/design)
Russ/Angron
Khan/Kurze (fast, lightning strikes)
Sanginius/Magnus (corrupted image of emperor, lost potential for future)

I'd probably pair Sangy with Angron, Russ with Magnus, Dorn and Perturabo and Lion and Horus

Russ and Magnus both had some sort of flesh change associated with their Legions. Russ brought the power of Fenris where ever he went. Wonder what that could be?

Sangy and Angron are full of rageamahole.

Dorn and Pert like building.

Lion and Horus both wanted to overall command.

There are many comparisons that can be made, across a whole host of Primarchs. The point isn't who goes with who, its that each Primarch has a trait that is shared by at least one other Primarch. Magnus' trait was his immense psychic power, which no other Primarch shared. Lorgar had some measure of it, but so did Sanguinius and his visions of the future. So it's not exactly a defining trait. The Emperor obviously programmed each important trait into two different Primarchs, albeit with different traits thrown in (For example, Lion and Guilliman's tactical mind) so that if one was lost then no big loss, and it meant he then had 2 different Primarchs to pick for a role, depending if one was unsuitable. So what would then happen if ONLY Magnus had been eligible for the Golden Throne and was then lost, killed or proved a VERY bad choice for the role? It stands to reason that a second super-powerful psyker who could do the same job was made, as an alternative.

Dorn Likes building, Perturabo likes breaking. They are literal opposites.

 IllumiNini wrote:
Dorn Likes building, Perturabo likes breaking. They are literal opposites.

No, Perturabo hates breaking, that's why he went traitor, because his Legion were always doing the breaking. Angel Exterminatus shows that he had some phenomenal architectural inclinations, and wanted to build loads of things, cultural things such as amphitheatres and public works.