Why don't Horus and Abaddon look Middle Eastern?

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**NorthernXY**

GW likes planets that resemble ancient cultures, Greek and Roman-like planets being ubiquitous.

Horus is the name of an Egyptian god. While both names Ezekyle Abaddon are Hebrew. While Abaddon looks like Horus anyway, generally names have some meaning. I mean, it would be somewhat weird if G-man was named Jaghatai Kahn. People would react like, "But he's white, not Mongolian." What if Kahn ended up on a planet we he was adopted and named John Smith? Lot's of people's eyebrows would raise.

**Gert**

You're looking at it from a modern perspective where cultural identity is heavily tied to location and race when that isn't massively a thing in 40k.
Even by the first years of the Imperium humanity had been amongst the stars for thirty thousand years and then also suffered a massive calamity reducing its collective cultural and technological knowledge a great deal. The chances that anyone in 40k actually knows that Horus Lupercal is named similarly to an extremely ancient God of a long gone empire is very unlikely.

**Haighus**

Also, ethnicity is a societally defined thing that isn't particularly well correlated with visual phenotypes. For example, there are plenty of folk of Middle Eastern ethnicity who have paler skin than people traditionally considered white European, especially if they live in less sunny areas. It can be extremely difficult to guess a person's ethnicity just by looking at them.

The Luna Wolves' homeworld Cthonia, as the (Greek) name suggests, is a world where the inhabitants live underground. You would expect this to produce paler skin tones as UV protection is not needed.

**Iracundus**

NorthernXY wrote:
GW likes planets that resemble ancient cultures, Greek and Roman-like planets being ubiquitous.

Horus is the name of an Egyptian god. While both names Ezekyle Abaddon are Hebrew. While Abaddon looks like Horus anyway, generally names have some meaning. I mean, it would be somewhat weird if G-man was named Jaghatai Kahn. People would react like, "But he's white, not Mongolian." What if Kahn ended up on a planet we he was adopted and named John Smith? Lot's of people's eyebrows would raise.

Jaghatai Khan is also portrayed in the FW books as looking more like a white guy rather than Central Asian or Asian.

Pretty much all of the Primarchs are basically European male features.

**mrFickle**

Surely in 40K years humanity will not resemble current humans in anyway other than 1 head 2 legs and 2 arms.

The variety of gravity and air pressure on different planets would change a significant amount of physical attributes. UV exposure will affect melanin production and change skin colours. Temperature will affect body hair growth. God knows what planets with a different ionosphere will do by letting more or less radiation to the planets populations

I find it more believable that humans in the 40K time line were subjected to gene therapies to prevent substantial mutations as the went out into the galaxy

**Sorry if I have used the wrong science words

Automatically Appended Next Post:
I’d also say that my name is Hebrew in origin, as are many European names as they are from the bible. Mark, Luke, John, Joshua, Mary etc.

And I have a very north European complexion.

But you have made me wonder to what extent the emperor designed the way the primarchs would look or if it was left to chance as the embryos grew into children

**BrianDavion**

I should note BTW that Horus is a name that isn't unknown outside egypt. My great Grandfather, an englishman, was named Horace, for example.

**Gert**

Did he also do a Heresy?

**Wyldhunt**

Gert wrote:
The chances that anyone in 40k actually knows that Horus Lupercal is named similarly to an extremely ancient God of a long gone empire is very unlikely.

Actually, I could have sworn there was at least one if not a couple moments in the HH books where someone goes, "... Huh. That guy is named after an ancient Terran god."

But your point stands. The planet of hats thing in 40k is basically just one of the more cartoony elements there to support the more silly-fun aspects of the setting. If an entire planet's population happens to bear a resemblance to a real-world population right down to their cultural elements, that's probably just the author using shorthand or thinking it would be neat. It's probably not the result of any in-universe logical explanation.

Why do Fenrisians share so many aesthetic commonalities with Vikings right down to names like Ragnar and Bjorn? Because the Planet Viking is a fun concept.

**Gert**

Wyldhunt wrote:
But your point stands. The planet of hats thing in 40k is basically just one of the more cartoony elements there to support the more silly-fun aspects of the setting. If an entire planet's population happens to bear a resemblance to a real-world population right down to their cultural elements, that's probably just the author using shorthand or thinking it would be neat. It's probably not the result of any in-universe logical explanation.

Why do Fenrisians share so many aesthetic commonalities with Vikings right down to names like Ragnar and Bjorn? Because the Planet Viking is a fun concept.

A really important thing to remember is that when it comes to Space Marines, their names are not necessarily those given to them at birth.

The White Scars are known for the practice of taking on a new name once an Aspirant is inducted as a full Astartes and while the name chosen often reflects Chogorian culture that is not always the case. In practice, this could mean an Aspirant once named Eberulf could be Tahar when he becomes an Astartes and not have any hint of the peoples common to Chogoris in his features.
40k is about broad cultural strokes when it comes to names more than anything else.

**Mad Doc Grotsnik**

OP.

How come few folk named Adam, Luke, John, Matthew, Peter etc look Near/Middle Eastern?

Because names don’t define ones look.

My forename is of Gaelic origin. My surname is also believed to be Gaelic, but it depends on your source as some have it French (which admittedly doesn’t query a Gaelic origin that much). A direct translation could be Cliff Handsome.

Given I’m neither? I wouldn’t read too much into names.

**FezzikDaBullgryn**

Why Don't more characters in the Christian Religion look middle-Eastern/jewish? Odd example that they picked the upstanding white guy as the figurehead of their religion.

**Olthannon**

One thing it bears remembering is that in 40k they aren't speaking our modern languages, it's set in the future and it isn't real.
Their names are simply a quick way to understand the lore without having to read a great deal into it. They have no bearing on how the character might look. There's not exactly a lot of thought into why someone like Sanguinius is primarch of the Blood Angels. It's about what that name evokes when you hear it and you as the reader find analogues in our own history which helps to create the character.

Abbadon is the destroyer. Shock and surprise there.

Horus is more interesting in his way. In that his name is for an ironic purpose. The Egyptian Horus was a sky god, a god of royalty and closely related to the Pharaohs. His Eye is of course a famous symbol of warding away evil, so there is no better irony than that he becomes to embody evil itself. The fall of Horus is shot for shot Lucifer the "light bringer" whose bitter fall to darkness nearly brings about utter destruction. Except it would have been a little too on the nose to call him that so Horus is a good alternative.

**Void__Dragon**

A lot of weird mental gymnastics going on to justify the vast majority of the Primarchs being white dudes when it's just because GW is a European company and their fluff has historically been exceedingly Euro-centric. That is the only reason. Anything else is an attempt at rationalization by the fans.

Also, is the Khan really just described as a European white guy? That's pretty lame my dude.

**Wyldhunt**

Void__Dragon wrote:

Also, is the Khan really just described as a European white guy? That's pretty lame my dude.

I'm not sure we ever get a detailed description about the Khan that goes into any racial features. I vaguely remember the HH books talking about him being inhumanly large and his general vibe, but if there's a paragraph going on about his exact appearance, I didn't clock it.

On that note, I'm not sure we generally get detailed descriptions of primarch features. Like, we'll get something about how tall they are. We'll get something very purple and poetic about how beautiful or uncanny or menacing they are. But as for details you could use to make a police sketch of them? Usually it's just like, hair color and maybe skin tone if they're unnaturally pale or red (Corvus, Conrad, Magnus.)

I think maybe we've just all absorbed a bunch of primarch art from the books and such and combined it with a stereotypical appearance of their legionnaires?

**Iracundus**

Void__Dragon wrote:
A lot of weird mental gymnastics going on to justify the vast majority of the Primarchs being white dudes when it's just because GW is a European company and their fluff has historically been exceedingly Euro-centric. That is the only reason. Anything else is an attempt at rationalization by the fans.

Also, is the Khan really just described as a European white guy? That's pretty lame my dude.

The first image is an image of Jaghatai Khan copy/pasted from the FW books:

https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Jaghatai_Khan

**mrFickle**

Iracundus wrote:
Void__Dragon wrote:
A lot of weird mental gymnastics going on to justify the vast majority of the Primarchs being white dudes when it's just because GW is a European company and their fluff has historically been exceedingly Euro-centric. That is the only reason. Anything else is an attempt at rationalization by the fans.

Also, is the Khan really just described as a European white guy? That's pretty lame my dude.

The first image is an image of Jaghatai Khan copy/pasted from the FW books:

https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Jaghatai_Khan

He looks like Ming the merciless from flash gordon

**Andykp**

NorthernXY wrote:
GW likes planets that resemble ancient cultures, Greek and Roman-like planets being ubiquitous.

Horus is the name of an Egyptian god. While both names Ezekyle Abaddon are Hebrew. While Abaddon looks like Horus anyway, generally names have some meaning. I mean, it would be somewhat weird if G-man was named Jaghatai Kahn. People would react like, "But he's white, not Mongolian." What if Kahn ended up on a planet we he was adopted and named John Smith? Lot's of people's eyebrows would raise.

Buy the model and paint him up that way. It would look cool and no one can tell you he isn’t Middle Eastern looking. He’s fictional.

**AllSeeingSkink**

Wyldhunt wrote:
Gert wrote:
The chances that anyone in 40k actually knows that Horus Lupercal is named similarly to an extremely ancient God of a long gone empire is very unlikely.

Actually, I could have sworn there was at least one if not a couple moments in the HH books where someone goes, "... Huh. That guy is named after an ancient Terran god."

My memory is bad, but I think by the year 30,000 the knowledge of "Horus" being the name of an ancient Terran god is very obscure, only a few scholars would be aware of the link. Wasn't there also some stuff around the eye of horus being an ancient symbol and there being prophecies related to the god Horus that applied to the primarch Horus?

As for them not looking middle eastern, yeah, 40k comes from a very Euro centric place, but also it's hard to imagine races as we know them now surviving another 30,000 years or so. It's easier to believe pieces of current cultures have survived in some modified and evolved format than it is to believe racial distinctions of european, asian, south-east asian, african, middle eastern, etc have survived.

But even though Horus is an egyptian god, is there any actual link in his fluff to egypt? Surely the egypt-chapter is the Thousand Sons, not Luna Wolves?

**Grey Templar**

There has been 30,000 years between today and when Abaddon was born. The ethnic makeup of Earth will have been completely demolished many times over and look nothing like today.

If anything, given that the bulk of humanity lives in massive cities, both normal and Hive types, or in space or other artificial environments, we should actually expect most of humanity to have paler skin due to lack of sunlight. Only people living on Agri, Feral, or worlds where they live in more normal sun exposure should we expect darker skin tones to still exist. And even then it is still dependent on the intensity of the system's sunlight. If you took the darkest skin toned people possible and settled them in a hive where 99% of them never got exposed to natural light again they would be pale as milk by the time 30k years passed.

I mean, every light skinned person is light skinned from only 10kish years living at 'slightly' higher latitudes, and that was with still living outside 99% of the time. People living in massive cities for tens of thousands of years is far more extreme.

This of course only has an effect on skin tone. Other features are up in the air and likely there are new ones utterly unknown to modern humanity.

**Gert**

Throw geneseed into the mix and it makes it every more complicated.
Every Legion had those Astartes who were wrought in the image of their Primarch or who looked nothing like them because the genetic resequencing from geneseed is such a mixed bag.
The XVIth even gave those who looked most like their father the nickname "Sons of Horus".

**Gargantuan**

Why would the primarchs look anything like the people on the planets they grew up on? They were all created in a lab on Terra using the Emperors genetic material as a base.

**RaptorusRex**

Gargantuan wrote:
Why would the primarchs look anything like the people on the planets they grew up on? They were all created in a lab on Terra using the Emperors genetic material as a base.

I'm pretty sure there's lore that implies they "shapeshifted" when discovered to look more like their home planets' peoples, but I can't source it off the top of my head.

**Gert**

Probably because it doesn't exist.
Magnus could change his form due to his immense psychic might but none of the other Primarchs shapeshift in anything I've ever read.
I've seen people suggest it but they've tended to be overly literal when reading a passage like "drawing to his full height" and the such to mean literally changing shape when its just an expression.

**RaptorusRex**

Gert wrote:
Probably because it doesn't exist.
Magnus could change his form due to his immense psychic might but none of the other Primarchs shapeshift in anything I've ever read.
I've seen people suggest it but they've tended to be overly literal when reading a passage like "drawing to his full height" and the such to mean literally changing shape when its just an expression.

I dunno, this excerpt about Fulgrim from Angel Exterminatus seems like it.

It was light, a cohering illumination that filled the end of the valley with its brilliant glow. Coryn stared at it, trying to pin some kind of form upon it, but all he could see were fleeting images and shapes: eyes, golden wings, a thousand wheels turning like the heart of the mightiest machine, multiple impossibly latticed genetic helices interleaving in a billion times a billion complex ways.

‘What the bastard hell is that thing?’ demanded Sullax, unlimbering the single-shot rifle he carried. ‘Is is dangerous?’

‘I don’t know what it is,’ said Coryn. ‘But I don’t think it’s dangerous.’

‘How do you know?’ asked Ptolea.

‘I just do,’ said Coryn, and he did. Though he did not know how he knew, he appreciated that whatever this light was, it had not come to harm them. He moved towards the light as it began to coil into itself, reshaping its form into something wondrous, a being reborn in its own self-immolation.

He felt something brush his mind, a presence greater than anything he could possibly have imagined. Everything he was, it knew. Everything he knew, it knew. He felt no violation at this, the presence was wholly benign. Tentative even, like a hand offered in friendship to a beautiful stranger. As the light was pulled into itself, a shape began to form, and Coryn gasped as he saw what lay at its heart. A baby boy, as perfect as any born to one of the gene-pure hermetics.

**Mr Nobody**

RaptorusRex wrote:
Gert wrote:
Probably because it doesn't exist.
Magnus could change his form due to his immense psychic might but none of the other Primarchs shapeshift in anything I've ever read.
I've seen people suggest it but they've tended to be overly literal when reading a passage like "drawing to his full height" and the such to mean literally changing shape when its just an expression.

I dunno, this excerpt about Fulgrim from Angel Exterminatus seems like it.

It was light, a cohering illumination that filled the end of the valley with its brilliant glow. Coryn stared at it, trying to pin some kind of form upon it, but all he could see were fleeting images and shapes: eyes, golden wings, a thousand wheels turning like the heart of the mightiest machine, multiple impossibly latticed genetic helices interleaving in a billion times a billion complex ways.

‘What the bastard hell is that thing?’ demanded Sullax, unlimbering the single-shot rifle he carried. ‘Is is dangerous?’

‘I don’t know what it is,’ said Coryn. ‘But I don’t think it’s dangerous.’

‘How do you know?’ asked Ptolea.

‘I just do,’ said Coryn, and he did. Though he did not know how he knew, he appreciated that whatever this light was, it had not come to harm them. He moved towards the light as it began to coil into itself, reshaping its form into something wondrous, a being reborn in its own self-immolation.

He felt something brush his mind, a presence greater than anything he could possibly have imagined. Everything he was, it knew. Everything he knew, it knew. He felt no violation at this, the presence was wholly benign. Tentative even, like a hand offered in friendship to a beautiful stranger. As the light was pulled into itself, a shape began to form, and Coryn gasped as he saw what lay at its heart. A baby boy, as perfect as any born to one of the gene-pure hermetics.

Additionally, in the book Wolfsbane I believe, Leman Russ learns that all the primarch are partially beings of the warp. So, although they are flesh and blood, the primarch are also subjective beings that change based on people's perception of them. They are literally 'mythical figures' who's size and shape is based on their and other's emotions. So when Guilliman walks in and someone sees a halo over his head, he might literally have an aura of light emanating from his head. Magnus is just the most extreme version of this, being much closer to the warp than most of his other brothers.

**Gert**

RaptorusRex wrote:

I dunno, this excerpt about Fulgrim from Angel Exterminatus seems like it.

I am going to go out on a limb and say that baby Fulgrim did not shapeshift from wheels and helixes into a baby.

I'd also argue that we need to be aware of the perspective here. These are mud-grubbing low-hivers who live on a planet described as a bleak, unforgiving world, shrouded in a perpetual grey twilight.

In my opinion, the light wasn't Fulgrim but rather just either the light from the pod itself which the Chemosian was in awe at, or the warp energy it was saturated in thanks to its journey.

Actual full-on shapeshifting isn't a thing. The reason normal humans view the Primarchs with such awe is that they're basically akin to gods to these people. It's warp-powered charisma alongside propaganda injected into people's brains at all times of the day.

**mrFickle**

Gert wrote:
RaptorusRex wrote:

I dunno, this excerpt about Fulgrim from Angel Exterminatus seems like it.

I am going to go out on a limb and say that baby Fulgrim did not shapeshift from wheels and helixes into a baby.

I'd also argue that we need to be aware of the perspective here. These are mud-grubbing low-hivers who live on a planet described as a bleak, unforgiving world, shrouded in a perpetual grey twilight.

In my opinion, the light wasn't Fulgrim but rather just either the light from the pod itself which the Chemosian was in awe at, or the warp energy it was saturated in thanks to its journey.

Actual full-on shapeshifting isn't a thing. The reason normal humans view the Primarchs with such awe is that they're basically akin to gods to these people. It's warp-powered charisma alongside propaganda injected into people's brains at all times of the day.

Some assassins can shape shift

But I don’t think the primarchs shape shifted, Fabius cloned them and they all came out looking the same, although maybe that’s because of when he took the DNA

I think we have to be a bit more open minded to the fact that the legends of the primarchs and their home world were written many years ago when shorts stories were telling us all we know about the primarchs and therefore the description of the planets they landed was part of their identity.

**Gert**

Callidus Assassins can shapeshift because they utilise Polymorhic Compound and train for years to get it right.

**mrFickle**

Gert wrote:
Callidus Assassins can shapeshift because they utilise Polymorhic Compound and train for years to get it right.

Primarchs can do many amazing thing without any training. But to reiterate i don’t think they did any shape shifting

**Gert**

The training wasn't the thing to focus on there, it was the Polymorph that let's them shapeshift. The training is how they get good at using the compound in the first place because its an extremely potent drug and difficult skill to master. Polymorph addictions are also common among the more veteran Callidus who get addicted to the sensation of shapeshifting.