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Hello all.
So in the aftermath of the Battle of Terra during the Horus Heresy, The Big E left instructions to be carried out in his absence. One of those instructions was to declare the rebelling Legions and armies Excommunicate tratoris. All records and information, no matter how insignificant, were to be removed from Imperial history, as if they never existed.

Right, now that that's been established, I do wonder: what do they tell the new Space Marine or Guardsmen recruits when they encounter the forces of Chaos on the field of battle?

I mean, I know that when questions are asked, usually the Inquisition is there to "clear your head."

What do you tell a new recruit when they ask?

Well I started re-reading dark adeptus the other day and the admiral in the Imperial fleet implies that because practically all institutions in the imperium declare all renegade marines killed during/after the Horus heresy that its a real pain for the IN to do anything about chaos marine fleets. The way I read it is like the IN ask for permission to engage the renegade marine fleet and the HQ says "What you talking about they all died out thousands of years ago." A bit like the guy that said "Don't listen to him! There aren't any Daleks! They disappeared thousands of years ago!" During the episode "The Parting of the Ways" which aired Jun 18, 2005. Sadly I couldn't find a clip to link :(

The IG aren't told. Those thar know of Chaos are either perminately in the inquistion, or just as effectively braindead as the legions of warriors that encounter Chaos and then "reeducated."

SM's on the other hand arent just told of Chaos, they are trained to fight it with every fibre of thier being.

Personally, I'd presume that such knowledge is carefully controlled and merely distributed on an "as needed" basis, but at the same time not as rare as some would suggest. Going by the GW studio's own fluff, I would have surely stumbled over remarks regarding the confusion at facing CSMs in some of the many sources that have been released over the decades, yet I never noticed any hints to this.

So, for example, I'd expect the officers onboard Navy vessels to be informed, but not the many crewmen. Likewise, the regiments of Cadia would obviously know about Chaos, but perhaps not so those from, say, Mordia or Valhalla - at least not until they are briefed for a campaign specifically aimed at its heretical followers.

Cadians and Mordian Iron Guard are well aware of the existance of Chaos. They get chaos attacks on their home planets like... every week. Chaos is likely widely known on Tallarm and Krieg too considering that chaos attacks was what made those planets into the wastelands they are today.

The terror that the chaos space marines inflicted ont he civilians of Terra was so great that it was forever in-grained in their psyche and to this day they're still scared of ALL space marines (except maybe the Imperial Fists? I dunno) ...or maybe that's been retconned by now?

There's a short story where a planetary governor is kicking himself for not paying more attention to the arbites' reports of rising chaos cult activity on the planet, so presumably the arbites and planetary governors are informed about Chaos too, at least.

Honestly, by now, I wouldn't be surprised if Games Workshop forgot that Horus was declared Excommunicate Tratoris. It really doesn't make much sense given the state of the galaxy for the last 10,000 years. The only fluff event that's ever seemed to address the idea that the armed forces don't know much about chaos is the 2nd Battle of Armegeddon. Every other story, battle, and BL book has everyone (at least, the armed forces) already knowing about Chaos to some extent.

the battle of armageddon wasn't because of chaos. IT was because they saw the grey knights.

The auspex systems of the ships of the Navy have the ability to identify Chaos vessels, mark them by their new, Traitor-fleet designation (it's no longer a "Jericho-class battleship" now it's a "Despoiler-class Chaos warcruiser") and sometimes even the name of the individual ship, including both what it was and what it became after falling into the hands of the Arch-enemy.

The IG's most-common enemy is other humans, generally traitors or other heretics, so they might have *some* familiarity of Chaos' mortal forces, even if they never see Daemons or CSM.

Excommunicate Traitoris is not a complete expunging from the records.

That is what happened to the 2nd and 11th Legions. All records completely destroyed.

Records are still kept on the Traitors. The designation simply puts the information as classified and says they were traitors.


The populace is aware there are bad guys. Traitors. They also are vaguely aware of dark powers behind said traitors, a power that corrupts. They don't know specifics.

Members of the IG operating in a warzone against Chaos will know them as cultists of the Dark Powers. That said, a guardsmen doesn't need to know about the 4 different chaos gods to kill their followers with a lasgun. Only the generals and warmasters need know specifics.

Also, it's not like CSM are incredibly recognizable as former Loyalists. To the average soldier they may appear to be demons with a vaguely similar shape to Space Marines. Furthermore, you don't need to know all about the Horus Heresy to know that there are Traitor Marines... just look at Huron Blackheart and his gang.

TiamatRoar wrote:Cadians and Mordian Iron Guard are well aware of the existance of Chaos. They get chaos attacks on their home planets like... every week.

Mordians, still? I was aware they had a huge invasion some time ago, but as I read about all records of it being purged I thought that the Imperium would keep them in the dark as well until needed.

hotsauceman1 wrote:the battle of armageddon wasn't because of chaos. IT was because they saw the grey knights.

Not according to GW studio fluff.

"With Angron and his hordes defeated, the Administratum ruthlessly suppressed all information regarding the invasion. To allow the truth of what had occurred on Armageddon to be discovered would be to confirm the very worst feats of the superstitious peoples of the Imperium. Better they be kept in ignorance, the Adepts reasoned, than be forced to face the realisation that Mankind faced such a diabolic threat. [...]
Every man, womand and child who had fought against Angron's Horde was rounded up by troops drafted in from other warzones, sterilised and relocated to enormous forced-labour camps situated far to the sough of the Armageddon Secundus. Millions were forced to live out the remainder of their lives in slavery, producing the raw materials with which the world they had given everything to defend would be rebuilt.
With the Hive cities all but empty and only the highest and mightiest exempted from the cull, the Administratum relocated millions of workers from far-away sectors to Armageddon to replace those who had looked upon the face of Chaos and lived."
- http://www.games-workshop.com/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m1390091a_WD278_C_Imperialis(Armageddon).pdf

Note that this doesn't really address CSM, but rather Chaos in general and most notably the existence of daemons. The Imperium's reaction would have probably been less "crass" if the planet was just attacked by CSMs.

 Lynata wrote:

TiamatRoar wrote:Cadians and Mordian Iron Guard are well aware of the existance of Chaos. They get chaos attacks on their home planets like... every week.

Mordians, still? I was aware they had a huge invasion some time ago, but as I read about all records of it being purged I thought that the Imperium would keep them in the dark as well until needed.

Hmm... not too hard to keep Mordians in the dark, Mordian itself being a nightworld

Hmm, could have sworn I read that Mordians had to deal with chaos uprisings a lot. Maybe my memory's off. Or confused regular uprisings with chaos ones (besides the one major chaos one).

The records couldn't have been purged that much since that was the incident that led tot he Iron Guard being well-known for their discipline I think. Well, they were probably just altered.

As an aside though, getting back to the original topic, how the hell do you remove all records to a galactic civil war, anyways? The galaxy isn't that small. They must have done a horrible job of it too considering that Ultramarines still remember the battle of Calth, and Iron Hands still blame the other Legions for the death of Ferrus Manus, and Tallarm's tank battle with the Iron Warriors is "the largest tank war in HISTORY", etc etc etc. Honestly, that's one of those fluff pieces that really wasn't thought through very well, I think (is it old? Hopefully they'll retcon it because the idea that they could purge those records across the entire friggin' galaxy right after a civil war (and presumably, the great scouring) that destroyed the Imperium's resources to even begin to do such a thing in the first place when a lot of the guys being purged ARE STILL ALIVE AND STILL FIGHTING THE IMPERIUM seems REALLY hard to swallow).

I don't think the Imperium actually suppresses knowledge about the Horus Heresy, and never read anything about such efforts. The Emperor dying to Horus is a central tenet of their religion, after all. It's more likely that they are merely suppressing the true extent of the threat by the Warp and the daemonic. In essence, in public lore, Horus would get turned from a Warp-fueled Chaos warrior into an egoistic rogue angel who wanted to ursurp daddy, and Chaos gets changed from a different and omnipresent(!) level of existence into a vague concept about sabotaging the divine order and becoming a mutant.

There's likely several layers and levels of knowledge about the true nature of both Chaos as well as the Horus Heresy and CSMs, all depending on how much the individual member of that caste would need to know for executing their assigned duty. An ordinary citizen won't know as much as a Schola graduate or Guard/Navy officer or Arbites, who won't know as much as the Astra Telepathica and Navigator houses, who won't know as much as the SoB, Space Marines, and the Inquisition. And even within these organisations there are likely sub-layers of knowledge, with information only being made available as the individual rises in rank and station - going by Codex fluff, this is at least known about the Dark Angels as well as the Adepta Sororitas.

Flinty wrote:Hmm... not too hard to keep Mordians in the dark, Mordian itself being a nightworld

badum-tshhh

Several of the Ciaphas Cain novels can actually help in this regard. The briefing scenes often showcase the gaps in understanding. Even mid level officers are often unaware of some of the more secretive aspects of the universe (like the fact that the Traitor Marines are alive and well, the existence of the Chaos Gods in specific, etc.) although the brass seems fine with telling people what they need to know to accomplish their missions.

 Lynata wrote:
I don't think the Imperium actually suppresses knowledge about the Horus Heresy, and never read anything about such efforts. The Emperor dying to Horus is a central tenet of their religion, after all. It's more likely that they are merely suppressing the true extent of the threat by the Warp and the daemonic. In essence, in public lore, Horus would get turned from a Warp-fueled Chaos warrior into an egoistic rogue angel who wanted to ursurp daddy, and Chaos gets changed from a different and omnipresent(!) level of existence into a vague concept about sabotaging the divine order and becoming a mutant.

There's likely several layers and levels of knowledge about the true nature of both Chaos as well as the Horus Heresy and CSMs, all depending on how much the individual member of that caste would need to know for executing their assigned duty. An ordinary citizen won't know as much as a Schola graduate or Guard/Navy officer or Arbites, who won't know as much as the Astra Telepathica and Navigator houses, who won't know as much as the SoB, Space Marines, and the Inquisition. And even within these organisations there are likely sub-layers of knowledge, with information only being made available as the individual rises in rank and station - going by Codex fluff, this is at least known about the Dark Angels as well as the Adepta Sororitas.

Flinty wrote:Hmm... not too hard to keep Mordians in the dark, Mordian itself being a nightworld

badum-tshhh

Your assessment is likely true, and the one I agree with, myself. The issue here is the official statement/quote in the original post, which says Emperor declared that all records of the traitor legions be purged, not records of daemons, etc. If it were the latter, it'd make much more sense as well as match up to the fluff as we know it. The former, however, makes no sense whatsoever and is an impossible task that also disagrees with the fluff of today (if all records were somehow purged, then even high level officers wouldn't know about the traitor legions).

Oh. I actually missed that bit - and I'd like to see a source for that now before I continue.

The only Legions that were struck from the records in the books that *I* have read are the two "missing" ones. The 6E rulebook has an "in-universe" chart of the Legions, and the ones marked as deleted are the two that none of us knows anything about. The other CSM Legions are still listed.

If the Emperor left any such instructions, they apparently were not carried out. Or perhaps this deletion is supposed to be carried out only after confirmation that the renegades have been successfully hunted down and eradicated, as the final act of their punishment and to mark it "case closed". In this sense, perhaps the two missing Legions are the ones where the purge was successful...

Or it's just another case of conflicting sources of fluff. /shrug