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Each primarch had a mighty power at their disposal, or were psychically sensitive, or could inspire supernatural awe and fear into non-trans humans. But not Alpharius/Omegon. His power was a twin? And his stature and strength was halved on account of it? Anyone have any theories about what A/O’s powers were? Head cannon welcome!

Please no headcanon. Also my guess is he was about as adapt as Roboute and/or Perty when it came to logistics and planning. Obviously there's a personality difference though, and we don't know a lot.

Their enigma was their power. Nobody ever really knew what was going on with them. Their cards are never shown. There's something to be said for this in my opinion.

*Completely Baseless Conjecture*

A sort of Gestalt hive-mind sort of thing. Not to the same degree as Nids, obviously, but maybe something like an instinctual coordination of individuals and cells towards a grand plan?

Similar to how Sanguinius passed on the Black Rage, maybe Alph/Omeg have a subtle “gift” to pass to their sons.

They also looked the same as all the marines in the AL so could change personas

Apparently alpharius was able to move his soul into another body........???????

See. No one knows! I think it's interesting that the twins do seem to possess ideological differences when it comes to the course of the heresy though. Its one of the things I've been impressed with, that the authors have been able to keep that impression up through out the series. It couldve easily been ruined by any author tackling the subject.

Their "power" is Pragmatism.

The AL seem to use camouflage, long term planning, allies (without betraying them for the lulz), technology, differing tactics for different enemies, not being insane, not being obsessed with honor, spikes, skulls, etc. Being actual genetically engineered super soldiers instead of egotistical honor obsessed cultists.

-STS

slade the sniper wrote:
Their "power" is Pragmatism.

The AL seem to use camouflage, long term planning, allies (without betraying them for the lulz), technology, differing tactics for different enemies, not being insane, not being obsessed with honor, spikes, skulls, etc. Being actual genetically engineered super soldiers instead of egotistical honor obsessed cultists.

-STS

excellent points!
Love it!

slade the sniper wrote:
Their "power" is Pragmatism.

The AL seem to use camouflage, long term planning, allies (without betraying them for the lulz), technology, differing tactics for different enemies, not being insane, not being obsessed with honor, spikes, skulls, etc. Being actual genetically engineered super soldiers instead of egotistical honor obsessed cultists.

-STS

except they're NOT pragmatic. far from it. that's what the conflict between them and Gulliman stems from. because when given any situation the Alpha legion's preferance is a rediculasly complex "goldberg machine" style plot. rather then conduct a simple more efficant plan

BrianDavion wrote:

slade the sniper wrote:
Their "power" is Pragmatism.

The AL seem to use camouflage, long term planning, allies (without betraying them for the lulz), technology, differing tactics for different enemies, not being insane, not being obsessed with honor, spikes, skulls, etc. Being actual genetically engineered super soldiers instead of egotistical honor obsessed cultists.

-STS

except they're NOT pragmatic. far from it. that's what the conflict between them and Gulliman stems from. because when given any situation the Alpha legion's preferance is a rediculasly complex "goldberg machine" style plot. rather then conduct a simple more efficant plan

The thing is, a lot of AL stuff is far more pragmatic/realistic than most of GW "rule of cool" stuff. Planetary invasions are ridiculously complex. Space Marine Chapters have the luxury of being hugely self-contained units focused on infantry-centric tactics at company level and below....which is hardly the pinnacle of tactical difficulty. Space Marine Legions would be conducting stupidly complex operations across entire planetary surfaces over light years of distance and taking months, if not years to prepare, conduct and redeploy.

IMO, the only primarch who could hold a candle to the AL is Gulliman....but then you are looking at two separate mindsets for the conduct of war. Gulliman is all about efficiency, like a Logistician....whereas the AL is more about effectiveness, like Special Operations. Gulliman is amazing at doing one thing at a time....whereas the AL can do seven things with the same resources and the same amount of time.

-STS

Head canon? Twincest.



Honestly, their obscurity is their power. Most of the other legions were pretty up-front in their loyalties, tactics, and goals. You never know what you're getting with Alpharius; you don't even really know what side he's on. It makes Alpha Legion much harder to fight or corrupt. They use misinformation as a shield as much as a weapon.

My personal headcanon is that there are no twins. One of the two "brothers" is the real primarch, the other is a regular marine serving as a decoy.

Good luck finding out which one is which.

 Tiennos wrote:
My personal headcanon is that there are no twins. One of the two "brothers" is the real primarch, the other is a regular marine serving as a decoy.

Good luck finding out which one is which.

Well, perhaps the power is that all of the AL are genetic clones, so that when/if the Primarch dies, he can immediately inhabit the nearest AL member. Sort of a low grade Perpetual, or a faster Lucius the Eternal?

-STS

My personal head canon is that there is a third brother in the primarch group, let’s call him Thetanos. He is the missing link to the AL puzzle. He would have some over the top personal primarch power, like being a psychic pariah or something very similar. He is as large as a primarch and is an absolute terror in zone mortalis operations. Only the emperor, malacor, A and O and Horus know he exists.

The real Alpharius was the friends we made along the way.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
The real Alpharius was the friends we made along the way.

So Alpharius IS the Alpha Legion? Hmmm, sort of a gestalt intelligence? Sounds legit

-STS

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
The real Alpharius was the friends we made along the way.

The friends whom we seemed to meet through unlikely coincidence and who, through pure happenstance, found reasons to insinuate themselves into our group even as we continued along our journey. At the time, it all seemed so organic, but looking back now...

"Shh..."

It's been a while since I read the short story about the twins from Primarchs, but isn't Omegon shown to be able to transform astartes into better imposters of himself complete with some of his physical traits and mission critical knowledge?

Combine that with twin thing, the focus on subterfuge, and the coordinated planning... I like to wonder if maybe the twins are capable of partitioning off chunks of their minds/souls. Splitting one head into two, if you will. So the reason Omegon is working behind Alpharius's back in the Primarchs story is that it's part of the plan they came up with after Legion. Knowing they were going to be infiltrating chaos, a faction full of soul-seeing demons, mind-reading psykers, and hyper-intuitive primarchs, they had to do more than just be convincing liars if they were going to get the job done. So they opted to have Alpharius partition off the part of his mind that was aware of the plan (possibly after planting false memories that he would keep in the non-split part of his mind), and then genuinely join team Horus. Any supernatural entities reading his mind/soul would see that he genuinely believed he was on that team and that he was genuinely getting soaked in chaos corruption. Seems legit.

Meanwhile, Omegon was continuing the plot by ordering missions like the one from Primarchs and staging his own semi-real death at the hands of Dorn. The twins' real strength was never their superhuman physiology; it was their minds. Using his body's death to convince Alpharius of his demise, Omegon now does his best to further the overwrought plot he and his twin agreed on.

Their legion is in the dark about their plot, scattered and confused. But because the twins know AL protocol and procedure, they can each locate and utilize AL cells/warbands that are still roaming the galaxy. Sometimes this is Omegon furthering his mysterious goals. Sometimes this is Alpharius, eing genuinely chaosy and thus maintaining the AL's credibility as traitors without even realizing that's what he's doing.

But that's just my convoluted headcanon.

So you think alpharius and Omegon are both still alive?

mrFickle wrote:
So you think alpharius and Omegon are both still alive?

Dorn's pretty sure he's killed one of them.

beast_gts wrote:

mrFickle wrote:
So you think alpharius and Omegon are both still alive?

Dorn's pretty sure he's killed one of them.

Well we try to ignore that Imperial Fist fanboy's fanfiction

mrFickle wrote:
So you think alpharius and Omegon are both still alive?

I like to entertain the notion that they might be. Although one or more of their original bodies is almost certainly dead. If the events of Praetorian of Dorn aren't part of a greater ongoing plot, then the last part of that book is just really stupid and boring. It would mean that...



It would mean that the intelligence of one of the main characters is wildly inconsistent even within a single book, and it would just be way less interesting than having one or more of the twins continue to pull strings from the shadows. So I like to think the more interesting, less silly thing is happening. Giving the twins some sort of supernatural ability that takes advantage of their unique nature and the physiology of their legion would compliment that. Plus, it would just be kind of a weird, wasted opportunity if one of the primarchs was just a shrimp for some reason. Like, a genius primarch with no supernatural abilities or especially impressive physical abilities would still be an asset, but they would definitely feel out of place.

Plus, between the twins, Ahriman's backstory, and various eldar twin characters, they seem to have confirmed that twins (at least humans and aeldari ones) share a soul for at least part of their life. Omegon can make an astartes resemble him more by feeding them his blood. So giving the hydra-themed primarch some sort of "the one is many, the many are one" ability seems appropriate.

Being poorly-written.

 Lotus Corgi wrote:
My personal head canon is that there is a third brother in the primarch group, let’s call him Thetanos. He is the missing link to the AL puzzle. He would have some over the top personal primarch power, like being a psychic pariah or something very similar. He is as large as a primarch and is an absolute terror in zone mortalis operations. Only the emperor, malacor, A and O and Horus know he exists.

Funnily enough HH books kind of hint at this, calling AL 'three headed hydra' (which is also their emblem, BTW), having third Greek letter on their emblems next to Alpha and Omega, and suggesting they can be in three places at once.

I think I have seen someone suggest that both are alive and one had their memory wiped. Therefore one is conducting the covert loyalist campaign and the other is fulfilling the role of traitor in aware of the true loyalist motive. When I say loyalist I mean to humanities survival.

I’d really love a AL codex that was half describing a loyalist army and the other half a CSM army to give the choice of character for your army. Maybe even the option to switch during the battle.