I like this thread.

If a GM wanted to play around with a lost Primarch, and wanted to court canon even though it really wasn't, I'd recommend the Forge World chapter, Red Scorpions. http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/Warhammer-40000/Space_Marines/Red_Scorpions

I really like Forge World's fluff for them, there models look cool, and because it's Forge World it feels a bit more canon to me.

A few points from the Horus Heresy novels so be warned of [[spoilerS]]:

• Leman Russ is described as the executioner in regards to the role of each primarch. This combined with Rogal Dorn's refusal to discuss the absent two Legions suggests at least one of them was essentially executed by the Space Wolves. Or it may be that Leman Russ personally executed another Primarch and the Legion was absorbed into the Ultramarines.
• The mention of one of the Primarchs being mutated and corrupted before being finishes rings true - several books discuss visions of the gene lab where the Emperor made the Primarchs, and during this vision one of the giant glass tubes that is growing one of the Primarchs is damage.
• The Emperor acknowledges in visions had by an astropath in The Outcast Dead that he is both Omnipotent and Omniscient, but that the trouble with these powers is that he can't be both at the same time. This suggests that early on the Emperor focussed more on his raw power in constructing the Primarchs, Legions, Crusades etc but that as time went on and the two Legions were lost/executed/absorbed he switched to more divinatory abilities to try and predict what would happen during the ensuing Heresy.
• The Emperor began work on the Golden Throne not as a life support machine as it ended upbut as a device to control the Web-way (the area that the Eldar use to travel interstellar distances safely from the powers of the Warp) in order to better control and protect the Imperium. His plan for Magnus to take control of the throne (as he knew it would be a permanent job, and he himself was too vital to the Imperium) shows that some of the Primarchs were designed from the start for consuming, destructive tasks.
• Mention of the two lost legions being similar in design to the Grey Knights is incorrect - the Grey Knights were set up in the wake of the Horus Heresy by loyalist marines from the Ultramarines, several traitor legions including the Death Guard, Luna Wolves and World Eaters, and the numbers from Sisters of Silence. All of these founding members had first hard experience of fighting Chaos and the taint it can bring and were deemed pure enough to be involved in the creation of a new gene seed, though this last point is conjecture.
• Also to note that the Legion of the Damned are made up of the remnants of Fire Hawks chapter and not the lost two Legions as someone conjectured javascript:void(0);/*1349274432912*/

Kasatka said:

Although the inclusion of LotD in the Honour the Chapter, with the DW time-line being set prior to the Fire Hawks being lost (In fact Fire Hawks are also present in Honor the Chapter) suggests that there must be at least another chapter that forms the Legion of the Damned.

Throughout Honor the Chapter, there are clips of narrative about a time-shifted ship from the future warning others not to approach due to some warp-disease, which leads into tales about the Legion of the Damned showing up, which sounds like it's still the Fire Hawks, some of which are in the wrong time because the Warp and stuff.

HOWEVER, it goes on to say that witnesses describe their heraldry as having either a sable cross on a field of some color I can't remember, or a cross on a sable field (don't have the book with me right now), which is not at all the heraldry of the Fire Hawks, which have a, ya know, firey hawk as their symbol according to Lexicanum. Notably, the Fire Angels have a cross in their heraldry, though Sable doesn't seem to be in their color scheme, so I don't know if that's an inconsistency in the book or whether there are other Legions of the Damned.

If you read the Space Marine Battles book: Legion of the Damned, a description is given of a ship that is presumably controlled by the LotD. I don't have the book with me but as far as I remember the ship is described as an Aquila larger than the largest Imperial Starship, completely gold in colour, bristling with weapons and seemingly in possession of a Nova Cannon the likes of which has scarcely been dreamt of in the Imperium. I have done a reasonable amount of back-reading into 40k fluff and I don't remember any mention of the Fire Hawks having anything like that… And that Wikipedia page seems to presume a lot about the LotD considering they are one of my favourite things from 40k and I have never even heard of any of that nonsense about the battle franzy illness and after that I stopped paying attention to be honest because the guy who wrote that page seems to have taken it upon himself to make up a load of waffling crap

Beast of War are running a line similar to this called "Inheritance".

Basically it breaks down that two "lost" primarchs return to the Imperium, returning from their crusades, and they are purists, they have evolved over the past 10,000 years with technology and view Mechanicus from Mars and thier worship of technology as heresy, and are stunned at the resultant being that the Emperor has become.In the process they turn some legions away from ritualistic behaviour and help them embrace technology. They don't use warp, they have never been corrupted by chaos. Psykers/Librarians are heretics ...

Such an interesting turn of events and brilliant concept

_{I’m also designing a particularly epic campaign that culminates in the discovery of the Forgotten II Legion the ‘Extirpators’}

_{The Primarchs name will be Ai’la’ausdi Yal Mago}

_{The back story I am going for to address why they are censured is that the Primarch did more than simply rebel against the Imperium he rejected the Emperor’s vision for humanity altogether.}

_{Stranded on a primitive world but ruled by a space faring tyrannical regime the Primarch realised early on that he had been created as a warrior and as a leader. From an early age he was suspicious of his lineage and the motivations of one who would alter humanity to such a degree in order to dominate.}

_{Like the other Primarchs he grew to become a champion of his people and ultimately united a number of planetary systems. Unlike most of the other Primarchs he rejected the mantle of Dictator, Tyrant or King. He was content to allow the people of his worlds govern themselves intervening only when they were threatened with an external threat (such as xenos) or they asked for his advice.}

_{Ultimately the day of reckoning came and Yal Mago was reunited with his Father the Emperor. He was offered command of the II Legion and a place in the Great Crusade. Yal Mago spoke with the captains of his Legion and with his Father and after a short time returned with an answer.}

_{In Yal Mago’s mind things were as bad as he had always feared. The Emperor had little in common with the humanity he purported to lead. Therefore Ai’la’ausdi Yal Mago would not be party to the Emperor’s plans to subjugate humanity. The Primarch rejected the whole sale slaughter civilisations, not least human civilisations, who did not defer to the Emperor and he could not countenance the ‘Imperial Truth’ of a secular Empire.}

_{Yal Mago told the Emperor this and told him more, he told the Emperor that no empire built in the way the Imperium was being fashioned could last. The Imperium would inevitable be defeated from within before being consumed from without.}

_{The Emperor’s reaction was as reluctant as it was inevitable. The Wolves of Fenris were unleashed on the planetary systems loyal to Yal Mago. This would have been the end of the Second Primarch were it not for the actions of his Legion. Of the 80,000 or so Extirpators no less than 30,000 sided with their Primarch. None the less the Extirpators could not stand forever against the might of the Space Wolves, the Imperial Army and the Imperial Navy. The Extirpators and their Primarch and his peoples retreated into wilderness space.}

_{Here they found new worlds to colonise. And here they would have stayed; content to allow the second Primarch’s predictions for the Imperium run their course. But the Wolves of Fenris did not easily let a prey evade them. They had been charged with the destruction of the II Legion in its entirety and their failure shamed them.}

_{For many years during the Great Crusade the fate of the exiled Forgotten Second Primarch was anathema to the other Primarchs but the Wolves did not forget and Lemun Russ sent as many hunters as he could spare into the deepest stretches of the void to find the Second Legion.}

_{Finally, perhaps a decade before the events of the Horus Heresy, the planet that the Extirpators had settled on was discovered. For the second time the Space Wolves assaulted the Second Legion determined to annihilate them. Yal Mago for his part had already been hounded from one home. He was loath to be driven from a second. He stood and fought. The battle lasted for weeks, the space above the planet clogged with the dead hulls of space craft. During the battle Yal Mago confronted Russ and was defeated in personal combat. Yet the 1 ^st company of the Extirpators were somehow able to drive back the Wolf King and recover their Primarch’s body.}

_{The few remaining Extirpators and what survivors from the civilian population that could be recovered fled once more into the void.}

_{This time the Space Wolves counted their victory complete. Ai’la’ausdi Yal Mago was slain, the Second Legion all but destroyed with the survivors driven deep into the void to perish in isolation.}

_{The Heresy of believing that one should rule in the Emperor’s stead could be understood, studied and defeated. The Heresy of believing no creature such as the Emperor or a Primarch should rule humanity at all was something altogether different. The fate of the Primarch who had defied the Emperor was sealed and records of his pernicious attempts to lead humanity to perdition deleted.}

_{But in the midst of the Horus Heresy the Imperium wilfully or otherwise was deceived. The Extirpators were not extinct and their Primarch was not dead. Yal Mago had survived.}

_{For ten millennia he has somehow endured, he as united the exiled, the itinerant, the lost detritus of a thousand civilisations in wilderness space and now he sees the Imperium for what it is, a decaying husk waiting for a final blow……}

So, Visitor Q are it that the players are supposed to join this new goodie-two-shoes or are they suppose to save the Imperium from him?

Are they truly lost legions? Have they ever been mentioned as such in WD or codex books rather than novels which are often contradictory?

I seem to vaguely remember Andy Chambers mentioning GW deliberately left 2 legion slots open so players could design their own original legions and subsequent chapters as home-grown legions and chapters were an important part of the hobby.

They were never meant to be "missing and are presumed lost".

And because there would be an infinite variety of these player legions, they were just never mentioned in GW works so as not to conflict with all the different back stories made by enthusiastic gamers.

So, Visitor Q is it that the players are supposed to join this new goodie-two-shoes or are they suppose to save the Imperium from him?

Oh to be clear Yal Mago in the 41st millenium is not a good guy. At one time maybe he had a reasoned approach on how to govern but now 10,000 years on he is completly driven by a brooding vengance and the associated madness that comes from a 'human' (If a Primarch can be called such) living so long. I am kind of imagining.a patchwork monster of cybernetics, alchemy and sheer will to survive all acting as a casket for the mind of a being that knows it was created to carry out a function it abhors and is obsolete in any case.

PCs are going to have to find a way to stop this thing even as the Sector crashes down around them.

This sounds like an awesome Idea! Thank you sir, I will use somethin like that if you don't mind

LotD are the FireHawks, full stop. The only thing that has changed fluff wise for them since that was hinted at but not said was that originally they were very much presented as ghost marines. More current fluff has them as having some bizarre "warp disease". They're still ghost marines to me!!!

The massive ship in the novel is the Raptorus Rex, their fortress monastery.

The massive ship in the novel is the Raptorus Rex, their fortress monastery.

Which, interestingly enough, is the original name of Kor Phaeron's massive flagship, used during the Horus Heresy at Calth.

Odd...

Yeah, either someone wasn't paying attention when they wrote that. Or The FireHawks jacked it at some point. I think it's mentioned as their Fortress Monastery before the Word Bearers reference. I could be wrong on that though.

Space Marine carjacking ftw!

On malcadors throne are two large skulls set into the armrests. each is engraved with a roman numeral, specifically the numerals II and XI, Malcador was notably (in addition to being the big E`s right hand man) the first master of assassins.

The missing legions primarchs are dead, possibly assassinated by the temple assassins of the assassinorum. In those days the emperor was unaware of the assassinorum`s activites (or was at least ignoring them.) It killed in his name but not by his command.

I follows that Malcador could have deleted the records of the lost legions after deeming them too dangerous, the same was not an option later on in the HH as the betrayl was too massive and public to contain.

I doubt temple assassins could have done for a primarch, Wasn't Russ the one they brought in to knock off an unruly primarch, doesn't he make reference to it in one of the later Heresy books? Didn't the Emperor have him around during the Council of Nikea just for the purpose of eliminating Magnus?

In diferent points of the plot, almost always something related to the wolves, some of the veterans of the wolves recall that the operation on Prospero was not the first time they had erase another legion.

My view is that, even more than the Thousand Son´s, or the own wolves, the lost primarchs were genetic duds, flawed in some way that their very existence were a hindrance for The Emperor plans. Russ was in part wolf, the Angels craved for blood, and the Thousand Son´s... The quirk is, what flaw can be so dire? It cannot be (as I see it) Chaos, cos the primarch, sharing some measure of the emperor, were inmune, until they willingly gave to it. So, what could it be?

I doubt temple assassins could have done for a primarch, Wasn't Russ the one they brought in to knock off an unruly primarch, doesn't he make reference to it in one of the later Heresy books? Didn't the Emperor have him around during the Council of Nikea just for the purpose of eliminating Magnus?

Yeah originally the Wolves had the job that the Minotaurs now do: killing other Astartes.

I doubt temple assassins could have done for a primarch, Wasn't Russ the one they brought in to knock off an unruly primarch, doesn't he make reference to it in one of the later Heresy books? Didn't the Emperor have him around during the Council of Nikea just for the purpose of eliminating Magnus?

Yeah originally the Wolves had the job that the Minotaurs now do: killing other Astartes.

I would like to make a short correction; to me it seems like the Minotaurs have the same job as the Wolves. Difference is that while the Wolves only takes orders from the Emperor himself, the Minotaurs are taking orders from the High Lords of Terra. If I've understood things correctly.

Yeah, that's correct. Of course the High Lords speak for the Emperor these days.

I always felt the corruption path was just too much of a low hanging fruit to really go with. Other chapters went traitor, and while their data was sort of expunged, it wasn't on the same order as the two missing chapters.

I personally was always drawn to a notion that it was something rather tragic, as in they were fulfilling their duty to the Imperium perfectly, and in so doing, it was necessitated that their existence be eliminated and forgotten. A played up version of how the heroic deeds of the Grey Knights will never be known outside the halls of Titan.

Looking at further sources (its been a while since I've read what the current rumors on the lost legions are), it would appear that they were lost as early as partly through the Great Crusade. Possibly they came into contact with a currently unknown alien race, fought them off, but in so doing, became corrupted themselves and had to be eliminated. Perhaps they did so willingly (e.g. by allowing themselves to be corrupted, and allowing their own destruction, they gave a chance for victory). In the Imperium's shame, and to prevent rumors of corruption among the marines, perhaps the information was destroyed.

I guess what I'm trying to say, is that I just don't buy the notion that they fell to chaos, were involved in a political rebellion, or were failures compared to the other legions, etc. That just strikes me once again as a low hanging fruit, too played up already in the setting. For something to be as secretive as what we see with the lost legions, it has to be something spectacular , worthy of song and legend, but at the same time, so shameful, so secretive, that it can never be known.

I've always sort of hated this "need for secrecy" aspect. Who are they trying to keep this from? Keeping secrets from your enemies is one thing, but if they already know, then the point is a bit lost on me. If anyone knows about the Grey Knights, it's Chaos (and the Space Pups, some of whom hate them). As for the "Lost Two", getting rid of the traces of their existence is dumb when Chaos knows about them. Half the Primarchs went to Chaos, and unlike the Imperium, who couldn't keep a Primarch alive if it was the ONLY thing necessary to defeat the Ruinous Powers, many of the Traitor Primarchs are still very much alive, and raging daemons. (Heaven forbid if ANY obviously evil faction in 40K can ever be put back any...) THEY know their brothers names, and probably what happened to them; the fact that they ignore this probably means that they don't care. Those two are gone, loyal to Chaos, or so far away as to be unnecessary to worry about.

It would be cool, though, if they someday have a Legion come out of a Webway portal. The Emperor has some plans for a Webway Project of His own, and it could be cool to learn that some group of "awesome" Space Marines got sent in to map, obsrerve, and guard it. Even Harlequins might have trouble with that many Astartes. Of course, they might have been soul-drained by now, but maybe the Emperor's power still protects them, even now, and even there. I might make something like this...

Grey Knights are my favorite Chapter, and their BS "secrecy" is a great reason I can almost never get to play one. "Are you a Guardsman?" Yes. "Did you see that Astartes?" Yes. Boom, bolter to the head. "Are you a Space Marine?" Yes. "Did you see that other Astartes?" Yes. "Well, we can't just cap an Astartes. Hmm, oh, have them mind-clensed." Yeah, I understand that, if the GK are fighting what they were meant to, anyone else around has, too, and that can corrupt them, but I still hate it.

Mind Cleansing your troops is stupid, you can't have a functional veteran corps if you keep resetting them. That idea has always been dumb as hell.

Back in the mid 2000's when they did the WFB campaign that was similar to the 40k 13th Black Crusade stuff, there was a set of item cards that were very thinly veiled power armor, power fist and... something else if I recall correctly. There were also a lot of rumblings of the possibilities of Sigmar having been one of the lost Primarchs. I always kinda liked that idea, even if it would be silly to merge the games and it should never happen, the idea of the WFB world being some back water that hasnt been found by the Imperium proper feels kinda cool to me.

Mind Cleansing your troops is stupid, you can't have a functional veteran corps if you keep resetting them. That idea has always been dumb as hell.

Wouldn't that depend on what part of the mind that's being cleansed though?

Mind Cleansing your troops is stupid, you can't have a functional veteran corps if you keep resetting them. That idea has always been dumb as hell.

[...]

Mind-cleansing is essentially controlled retrograde amnesia. You lose locational and episodic memory, but not semantic memory and so on.

In a nutshell, you maintain your skillset and acquired talents, but you have no idea when or how you learned it.

Grey Knights mind-cleansing their Chapter Serfs on active duty makes complete sense to me, and I'm surprised not more do it.

But I find it dumb that they mind-clense other Space Marines who see them, like they need to be some secret, lest Chaos finds out whose been punking all their daemons (hint: the know). And, since mind-clensing, like everything else in 40K, is at least moderately hard, time-consuming, and expensive, the leftovers of your winning Guard army just get gakkked, cause there's always more Guardsmen.

Again, with "seeing" daemons being enough to damage your mind, and most Humans being so weak of mind, I can see why you wouldn't want your IG getting repeat exposure, but it still seems wasteful, even by Imperium standards, and the codex for them once explained that, sometimes, GKs COULD have reasons to fight other enemies, but you'd still liquidate your leftovers, after the GKs departed. It took me a lot of whining to get my friend in the homebrew to allow me to be a Grey Knight in our team. Humorously, as one would expect, the "average" Imperial citizen had no idea how I was different than the other Angels of Death before them, and it caused no problems, but I had to try to get to, before it went off easy.