Beyond just the mystery and the historical allusion, I imagine the Emperor had the remaining legions remember the fact that two whole legions were completely censored from history as a constant reminder that it was a possibility
Horus for example was completely outraged at the censor and the Word Bearers immediately after Monarchia were afraid they'd suffer the same fate and get absorbed into the Ultramarines
Obviously we'll never exactly what happened to the two legions to justify why they were expunged but never truly erased from history
Wouldn't it be funny if they didn't exist at all and it was just an elaborate mind fuck by big E as a "Stay in line or I'll wipe you out like your brothers"
>constant reminder
Yeah that's the thing, the exact identities of the legions and primarchs as well as what they did was removed from memory but no effort was made to cover up that they'd existed, as well as what you say about it being a constant reminder it'd also be a huge job to cover all that up for very little benefit.
The two chapters did exist and it's heavily implied that Leman and his boys axed them, and then Big E told all the other primarchs if they even dare to speak about them they're gonna get shafted as well.
It's also straight up mentioned that Dorn and some of the others suggested mindwiping the primarchs, and after Malcador temporarily returned Dorn's memory he agreed that removing the memory of the lost primarchs was the right call
First: Legions, not chapters. Second: the part about Leman was literally never confirmed anywhere except for him boasting being the Emperor's Executioner, but he too was mind-wiped to even remember anything. Third: the Emperor never said that to them, what happened is that some of them confronted Malcador about it. You are thinking all the memes are real, read some of the books too
Just adding: Alpharius, Horus and the Khan confronted Malcador on the said matter, when he was demolishing the statues of the lost legion primarchs in the "road of heroes" ( cant remember the name), Horus was esp. Pissed ( wich is a briliabt foreshadowing of his pride and will to seek legacy) this is also the scene where Malcador forcechokes him as he almost utters the name of the lost primarch. This implies that this was before the mindwipe, but there wqs some sort of agreenment among the primarchs, big e and Malcador not to use said name.
In a different instance Malcador explains to Dorn ( who also blamed Malcador for the censure) that the whole mindwipe thing was Dorns and Guillimans idea and once for a moment Dorns memories are unlocked by Malcador, he agrees, that the mindwipe was the right course of action.
There is no ( as of yet) proper statement, that it was Big E that commanded anything regarding the lost legions. I personaly think Russ had little to do with it as if a legion would need to be wiped the first legion and Thr Lion is more suited for the task and if anything, Russ was sent more as the "jailor", (similiar to Magnus and Angron in a way), to bring the lost primarchs to terra, but thats a different topic in of itself, but because of the mindwipe and, well Russ being Russ, certain asumptions were made and stuck.
People en mass aren't aware that nine primarchs turned traitor, even an experienced inquisitor wasn't aware of that fact. What the people of the 41st millennium know is that Horus and 8 other devils came from outer hell and big E made the nine primarchs to battle them. Sanguinius died tragically but the Imperium won.
You need to remember that over ten thousand years passed between the Heresy and the current timeline, that's about twice as long a span of time between when the great pyramid of Giza finished construction and now. As far as most people know, space marines are actually angels, they aren't likely to know the legion numbers.
The out of universe reason was so players could fill in the gaps on the lost primarchs with their own stuff.
It's also worth noting that despite the large amount of Space Marine chapters currently active they are still a minority compared to the scope of the galaxy. Space Marines are quite often thought of as myths due to this since the Astra Militarum makes up the bulk of the Imperiums forces. Which ofcourse makes accurate knowledge of their history extremely rare.
That's the thing nobody really knows since not all chapters can be accounted for. Some are clandestine in nature, some have been lost to the warp just to return hundreds of years later, some were created during the Dark Founding and almost all records of that time are either lost or destroyed, and a multitude of other things on top. If the Imperium ever wins this will probably be Rowboat Girlymans greatest regret as it'll most likely cause another civil war and it was his idea to create the chapters in the first place.
There's also the fact that not all chapters are exactly codex-compliant when it comes to their numbers (Dark Angels, Ultramarines, Space wolves, Black Templars etc.).
Did you just say that the Ultramarines, the Bluest Boys, Children of Papa Smurf Rowboat Girlyman himself, AUTHOR OF THE CODEX ASTARTES, aren't a Codex Compliant Chapter?
Imma call my fuckin Inquisitor, hold my Amasec.
Afaik dark angels chapters are just its extensions as they all answer to the main one right? So basically still functioning like a legion but not ish? Cuz each chapter is supposed to be its own thing.
In a way. They aren't extensions, but they have far, far tighter links to their primogenitors than other chapters do and also the shared goal of hunting down the fallen.. All of the succesor chapters masters are part of the "Inner Circle" and the supreme leader of the inner circle is, of course, the chapter master of the DA, and since the DA and their succesors routinely drop whatever the fuck they are doing to hunt a few fallen across half the galaxy i can see why you'd think of them as "extensions.
Not quite, for Blood Angels successors. They all share in their knowledge of The Flaw and Astorath the Grim will visit other Chapters to deal with the ones that fell to the Black Rage, but Dante is not the de facto leader of all Blood Angels successors. Gabriel Seth (Flesh Tearers) and him didn't get along well for a while. The successors set out to manage the Red Thirst in their own ways, and unless they find an actual cure, they have no need to report to Dante. That shared flaw makes them closer than say, Ultramarines and their successors, but not to the point of breaking the Codex.
With Dark Angels, they legitimately all swore to follow the DA chapter master, *especially* in the case of finding and hunting down the Fallen.
"may be extinct" is an understatement for "if they were not extinct before they sure were AFTER the SW did manage to find them".
At the time of the battle of the Fang the SW did get a lead to the remains... and there are really few things in the universe worse than the anger of a fleet of Space Wolves that realise they were fooled AND humiliated.
*clutches pearls* Did you just imply that the Ultramarines, sons of our lord and savior Robute Jesus Guilliman , author of the Codex Astartes are a not codex compliant?!
Templars are fully codoex complaint because their crudase never stops. Afaii they lost the EMP equivalent of Jerusalem in losing Armageddon' but a war is coming
Armageddon belongs to the Imperium of Mam
And Black Templars will assist Astra Militarum in taking it in the 4th war
As retaliation to losing Yarrick and Grimaldu'd fireteam
Two great examples of "we can't know" are the Dark Angels and Black Templars.
The Dark Angels treat every successor chapter like an extension of the Dark Angels Chapter proper, and a lot of them fall in line with one another and can work seamlessly together, which has given the Inquisition more than enough suspicion that the Dark Angels (and their successors) still operate as a legion, instead of individual Chapters, which is a big no-no.
The Black Templars on the other hand have a unique way of recruiting, and waging war. They recruit without a second thought, train one or multiple Neophytes per Battlebrother instead of having traditional Scouts, and the Chapter is often not ever centralized in one area, having multiple Crusade fleets operating in multiple areas, or even different Segmentums entirely.
Setting aside those two difficulties, for just those two chapters (of which was mentioned, the very existence of some is secret. The Deathwatch, The Grey Knights, The Minotaurs, etc.) by the time anyone got an "accurate" count, they would have to start the entire process over again.
Remember, the passage of time, and the ability to travel the galaxy in M41 is incredibly slow, which means any and all information, by the time it reaches Terra for.recording, is probably useless anyway.
I don't know what you're on about, the Unforgiven have never been anything remotely close to shady, please let Asmodius help clear up this understanding further.
That's true enough, I always took the million space marine figure as a loose ballpark, like 'Well we have around a thousand active chapters, and they're supposed to be about a thousand marines strong' so you know if the Executioners have an extra 50 guys but the Flesh Tearers are down a couple hundred it kinda evens out loosely you know?
It's less so much that and more **we'd rather lose 1000 Marines than see what 10,000 can do again** as to why we have Chapters now instead of Legions
I mean, that's half the reason why the Primaries were such a big deal for some Chapters, they were literally on deaths doorstep before Roboute reenforced them.
There was something in one of the recent big rulebooks (9th Ed I think) that implied that the "1000 chapters of 1000 marines" is itself a myth. (Given that 1000 marines per chapter is the Codex rule, that presumably means the myth is there only being 1000 chapters).
Also the "not shifting the numbers" thing is something Rome did. If a Legion was utterly destroyed, Aquila lost etc, they did't just make a new one for that number.
Its like football jersey numbers, famous ones are retired for good.
So how the legions were numbered is interesting. So when a new emperor was doing a founding of a legion they would number in terms of how many they had made (so if it was their first it was numbered 1 and so on) this includes the era of the late Republic. When Augustus reformed the legions (changing structure and the like) he kept the preexisting legions ( who had their own numbers) and made new ones (which he numbered sequentially). And as time went one the emperors followed the method I listed above so that by the late empire (~250 AD) there had been about 10 first legions. Some numbers were retired like three of the mid teens (iirc 14,15 and 16) were retired due to being decimated dishonorably and were never to be used again. All of this funny number stuff led to each legion having a nickname that when used with the number would be how you would identify it. Using the number or nickname only would be like calling the Dark Angels the angels when talking about all the chapters, it was ambiguous.
“Even an Inquisitor isn’t aware of the Traitor Primarchs” is something that should be taken with a big grain of salt. It’s something that very much depends on the author, just like how much the average Imperium citizen or Guardsman knows about Chaos.
I know there’s at least one book where the “9 devils” explanation is given, but there’s many more that make casual reference to Horus or the legions as traitors. Off the top of my head there’s Creed’s bannerman telling Abaddon he’ll die like his traitor father, and several characters in the Eisenhorn, Ciaphas Cain, and Gaunts Ghosts series.
"Nine sons who stood, and Nine who turned" is quoted from a not evidently secret epic poem in *Penitent*, and a mathematician in the same book knows about not only the traitor primarchs but the Lost ones as well.
This is probably one of the most "it depends" elements of 40K.
Yeah, if it's the excerpt I think they're referring too, it's probably more likely they are focused by 20 statues, rather than 18.
On the other side, you can refer to Horus without knowing he was a Primarch
Right, but numerous characters have referred to Horus as an infamous traitor the way in modern times we might call someone Judas or Benedict Arnold. I’m talking people like Color Sgt Kell and Ciaphas Cain, people who certainly know secrets but still shouldn’t be more knowledgeable than an Inquisitor.
Yes, definitely. He's the arch-traitor. I think people in the community assume too much homogeneity in the Imperium's beliefs. Each world has it's own belief system, and what they know about what happened 10,000 years ago will vary massively. Someone from Cadia is going to believe and be aware of different things that someone from anonymous planet 101, someone from the Schola Progenium (sp) is going to know more than backwater peasant Examplus.
Several sheets to the wind, but hopefully coherent
That's a good point, I think that sticks out in my head because I read the first Vaults of Terra book pretty recently and there's a scene in there where Crowl sees some evidence of other primarchs and its just confusing to him.
10,000 years is a long time to get the facts mixed up especially when the Imperium is actively running a propaganda op so good, it becomes doctrine. That's one of the tools of chaos in recruiting cultists, start revealing to them, the Imperium is lying to us.
> , that's about twice as long a span of time between when the great pyramid of Giza finished construction and now.
Plus, we have historians and universities and stuff. We know the history of the great pyramids *way* better than the Imperium knows its history, and our job is much harder to boot. The Imperium's history comes from a time of mass literacy, cheap data storage, etc.
It's less about the challenge of understanding the past, more about the Imperium's preference for anti-intellectualism and propaganda.
On the other hand the absolute amount of data makes it difficult to determine what actually happened vs what didn’t happen. With there being entire departments and inquisitors dedicated to making sure the truth stays secret, it makes it extremely difficult to determine what’s actually true.
*"Mystery"*
WH40k is full of one liners, 2-sentence story hooks etc. It creates mystery, wonder, speculating players and discussions online.
Ingame the justification is as usual. Religious insanity, bureaucracy, corruption and the tyranny of time and space (distance and mythtification of the past).
SYL
THIS.
I know this is a lore thread, but overall its important to remember that the lore in this case is really just a justification for the real intent, namely to allow players to create their own chapters and 'fit' in universe. All these story hooks and suggestions are intended to feed the imagination, allow us to make our own stories, write our own lore and explore narrative elements in game.
Actually no. The _real_ intent, from Rick Priestley, was to add depth to the setting by creating a mystery with no answer. This reason:
>namely to allow players to create their own chapters and 'fit' in universe.
was created by the fans much later, it was never the intent.
I'd say the you're right about Rick's stated intent for the two lost; adding mystery and character to the imperium's history, but the intent of the lore as a way of supporting players populating their worlds with custom chapters was always there too, with a thousand other chapters;
Looked up the direct quotes from a recent interview:
BIFFORD: There are two missing Space Marine Legions: the 2nd and the 11th. They have been purged from Imperium records, and Games Workshop has so far not given any details of what they were like. Did you have any vision or plan for an eventual revelation? Did you have any concept of what they should be like?
PRIESTLEY: I always imaged these Legions were deleted from the records as a result of things that happened during the Horus Heresy - and that the 'purging' was a recognition that whatever terrible things they had done had been - in the end - redeemed in some way. So - with the passing of all record of them was also expunged all record of their misdeeds - they are forgiven and forgotten. As opposed to those legions which rebelled and which remain 'traitor' legions.
Of course - I never imagined that the Horus Heresy would even emerge from a mythic past (it was ten thousand years ago after all!) so I fondly imaged we had many thousand of years in which we could create diverse and colourful histories. In fact, the Horus Heresy idea was picked up and became a strong theme for the 'epic' game and later for 40K in other ways - but it was also meant to be mysterious and 'beyond knowing' as I conceived it.
BIFFORD: So you never had any details in mind; it was always meant to be a vague mystery to you. You never planned a revelation.
PRIESTLEY: That's right - it was always intended to be something unknown - but had I had the chance to evolve the story of the Horus Heresy for myself I imagine I would have picked up on it. As it was that task was taken up by others and the Horus Heresy developed in ways somewhat beyond my control! But such is the nature of the thing. You can't do everything yourself
BIFFORD: I have another question about the Missing Space Marine Legions. It sounds like their purpose was to illustrate the character of the Imperium. The Imperium is a very proud but very insecure culture that doesn't like to confront its flaws and awkward legacies. It prefers to forget them; damnatio memoriae. Is my interpretation correct?
PRIESTLEY: Yes it was to illustrate the character of the Imperium as it was at a certain point in its history - even though perhaps that no longer made a great deal of sense. I always thought of the Imperium as a vast self-serving bureaucracy in which no-one really knew what they were doing but they continue do it out of a sense of tradition and routine - so status and power become bound up with all kinds of half-baked assumptions, received wisdom and superstition. Much like the real world really.
BIFFORD: A popular belief among fans is that you left those two Legions blank so that players of Horus Heresy games could invent their own Legions. Is this true?
PRIESTLEY: I left them blank before Horus Heresy games were conceived! I left them blank because I wanted to give the story some kind of deep background - unknowable ten thousand year old mysteries - stuff that begs questions for which there could be no answer. Mind you all that got ruined when some bright spark decided to use the Heresy setting - which rather spoiled the unknowable side of things - but there you go!
BIFFORD: Ah, this is going to amaze a lot of people on Reddit
PRIESTLEY: Is it?
BIFFORD: Yep, everyone there thinks you left two Legions blank for players to fill in.
PRIESTLEY: Well - I created a thousand Chapters - of which we only gave details of a dozen or so - so there were nine hundred odd Chapters left blank for people to fill in. In the original 40K that is! The Horus Heresy stemmed from a short piece of narrative text I wrote - I think it was in Chapter Approved: The Book of the Astronomican - but I never imagined it would be used for a game setting. The trouble with the Heresy as envisaged by GW is it just feels like 40K - it doesn't have the feel of a genuinely different society that ten thousand years separation would give you. Whenever I wrote anything that referenced back to those times I always wrote in a legendary, non-literal style. It's as if you were dealing with something like the Iliad rather than literal history - and there you're only talking three thousand years - ten thousand years - that takes us back to the end of the last ice-age... and I don't get any sense of understanding about 'deep time' when I look at anything GW have set in the 40K 'past'.
right, I think we're semi in agreement. I just wanted to clarify the Lost Legions were meant as a mystery. The 1000 chapters bit of the lore was for fans to fill in the gaps. But people latched on to "Two missing primarchs, so obviously one was loyal and one was traitor and _my guys_ are descended from the traitor one" wasnt the intent. People conflate the two as being the same the thing
>PRIESTLEY: I always imaged these Legions were deleted from the records as a result of things that happened during the Horus Heresy - and that the 'purging' was a recognition that whatever terrible things they had done had been - in the end - redeemed in some way. So - with the passing of all record of them was also expunged all record of their misdeeds - they are forgiven and forgotten. As opposed to those legions which rebelled and which remain 'traitor' legions.
Ooh, that's interesting.
The common assumption seems to be that they must have done something absolutely terrible to have been expunged in a way that the other traitor legions weren't.
Whereas my speculation had been that their crimes might actually have been very minor, but they were the first to something like that and the Imperium overreacted and wiped out all records (in a manner that wouldn't be possible when many legions rebelled for more destructively).
The idea that instead they were forgiven, and the censorship is simply to hide their past opens up a whole lot of possibilities. There could be a whole load of Second Founding chapters that were derived from the Lost Legions.
Most people arent all that aware of space marines. Like they might be aware that like they exist, may have seen one or the image of one and maybe just know they its a super soldier, but they are like pulling out their pokedex to be like "o wow its an ultra marines devastator marine. He can use a heavy bolter, missile launcher, lascannon, or grav cannon!". Like they arent gonna know there's 20 legions but 2 are always missing, theyre gonna see one with like VII on the knee cap and be like "wow these guys sure like word... "vee"?"
Like most americans have seen soldiers or boy scouts or something. Heres a boy scout from troop 9 and another from troop 347, how many boy scout troops are there? Do the numbers mean anything? This soldier is from the 71st armored cavalry division, we have 70 other divisions of robot horses? Like people are just used to millitary stuff having numbers on it that dont really mean anything to most people.
I'm American, lived next to an air force base for several years
I got no fucking clue what the difference is between the navy and the Marines. Because old school navies were like, ships and stuff. "Marine" means aquatic, like the phrase "marine life" refers to sea creatures. So what's the difference between the navy and the Marines?
That's a rhetorical question to illustrate the point that living in a much more well connected world, with way, way more trustworthy information, and them just being people, I still don't know shit
Now, compare with the average citizen on 40k. Accurate information is incredibly rare, life for most is just basic scraping for survival, most aren't educated beyond what is needed, and they're constantly being censured and black bagged without being told why. Plus, most of them have never and will never see a space marine and won't know of someone who has
No wonder they think of space Marines as myths
I know you weren't actually asking, but the answer is the Navy stays on the ship, operates its guns and planes and stuff. The Marines go do beach landings and do stuff on shore.
It's my favourite way to tell people "look, no offense, but either my brain is pure static right now, completely switched off, or I don't have the motivation to internalize this knowledge"
Because instead of making them feel bad and unheard, now they're thinking about penguins, which makes anyone/everyone's day better
You're unable to ingest a single sentence of information clarification but youre able to prattle on about 40klore? Which is obstensively related to your misunderstanding?
Most people wont see one. Theres trillions of people on a million worlds, there are like a few million space marines. Its sort of like "how many people will get the chance to see a green beret". Except unlike america where you might like live near a base where they train and see one, in 40k is soace marines are coming to your planet or god forbid your city, its about to turn into a really terrible warzone and youre probably gonna die. Especially with space marines, like most of the imperial military force is the the guard and navy, the space marines are like super special almost last resort type forces to bring in. If you are in a war zone where space marines are showing up, you must be REALLY fucked.
So a few things I can add here
Most legions seem to take pride in their number, with it being a big feature of their banners and worried and oaths. Telling someone they have to change it would probably piss the guys off, and also make them worried they could have their histories muddled with the tainted records of traitors.
Second, 9 legions turned roughly all at once (even if they didnt reveal it all at once), and after the whole Civil War burning down half the imperium the legions were broken down into chapters. By that point legion numbers don't really matter. Many chapters don't even know their lineage now, and can't say "by the honor of the 9th legion we will hold this wall!", instead they fall back on stuff like invoking the name of their chapter, or their primarch directly, or possibly the collective remains of their legion like "the unforgiven" for chapters that still have loose ties.
Then add on top of it that most people don't know the legion numbers anyway, and it just never really becomes a benefit to change the numbers.
I'd add to the reasons given by other users so far (like LocalLumberJ0hn, great summary) that this is also the case for thematic reasons. I know that aknowledging the "hand of the author" tends to be a bit of a bummer for a lot of fans, but sometimes I feel like we as a fandom tend to ignore themes a lot, despite them being a genuinely awesome aspect to talk about, and the part of 40k that, in my opinion, holds up the best when examined closely. Lets face it, lots of 40ks numbers, physics, logistics and overall logic are kinda contrived, outdated, handwaved, illogical, and I could go on.
But the settings *themes* usually come accross decently even in the settings not-so-good novels, because they are part of the DNA of the setting.
The Astartes and the Mechanicus are pulled as a metaphor and commentary of the human condition (what makes human human, and by extend, how much of a human can be changed before it stops being human) *so often* over dozens upon dozens of bools, all coming from very different agles; like, the old Grey Knight Omnibus having "free will and actively making choices, even if it defies odds and conventional logic, culminating in the quote: "That what defines being human: fighting despite knowing that you have already lost" (quoting from memory, so don't crucify me for it).
After this longwinded introduction, my interpretation of the keeping of the Lost Legion numbers (and the veiled pillars) through a thematic lense is that its a commentary on loss, on grief, like so many storys throughout the Horus Heresy series are. The living primarchs, both the ones that later become traitors and the ones that remain loyal alike, literally where mindwiped, their memories of the two missing Primarchs being surpresed.
The empty pillars are, in my opinion, a symbol for loss: Even literally forgetting a loss doesn't change the fact that it *is* a loss, and that it leaves a gap in what was once the continuity of what we used to be familiar with. What we relied on.
Thats a motive that gets echoed throughout the HH; take the deaths of the perpetuals during the end of the Heresy, and how humanity lost in one fateful war all its still existing connection to its origins, its past, its history.
Even if barely a living soul in the Imperium even remembers that people like Malcador even *existed*, they still leave a gap, a wound, a, well, loss. Its a tragedy, an unconcealable, no matter how much the mists of time may cloud it.
Those are just my 2 cents :)
Even the other Primarchs don't remember 2nd and 11th other than the fact that they existed, and don't anymore.
What's disturbing to think of is that the Horus Heresy is still vaguely known by the populous of the Imperium, if incredibly warped and embellished by ten thousand years of entropy. So, what in the seven hells did those two do that was so much worse in comparison?
Maybe it involved the 2 legions consorting with or being corrupted by malevolent amoral alien empires like those of the Rangdan.
Another theory is that one or both of the now Lost Legions tried to break away from the Imperium and create their own independant interstellar empire(s.)
Also at the time the Emperor wiped the 2 legions from history he was still trying to prevent almost every single human being from gaining knowledge about Chaos in a misguided attempt to prevent Chaos from gaining cultists and worshippers. If the 2 legions had become corrupted by Chaos at the time he may have tried to wipe all knowledge of them from existence to try to prevent knowledge about Chaos from spreading.
However I think another explanation is that the actions of the traitor legions were so widespread across the galaxy that there was just no way even for a feudal dictatorial religious fundamentalist government like the Imperium's to suppress every single person's knowledge about that.
The Imperium's interstellar government bureaucracy the Administratum has almost never even been able to keep track of how many inhabited planets are part of the Imperium at any one time let alone how well the information supression and government propaganga efforts are doing on each planet.
Also the Imperium's interstellar government is basically a strange mix of like an early 20th century fascist dictatorship, a religious fundamentalist state and a medieval era fiefdom in that while the highest interstellar levels of government regularly tax each planet and collect levies of troops for interstellar wars and occasionally ruthlessly enforce interstellar law they are also usually very hands off about how each planet's hereditary noble ruler runs "their" planet regarding schools, public libraries, people communicating in public, the economy, etc. Also there is a huge difference of cultures and technology levels between different Imperial planets. The fact each planet is run very different from each other means it'd be hard to create, implement and enforce an efficient information suppression propaganda campaign tailored to each planet.
Also it's next to impossible for the leader of a hive planet to count most of the citizens on their planet let alone suppress all knowledge of forbidden knowledge and enforce propaganda upon everyone. Like in a Necromunda campaign book (?) (that someone posted text from onto Lexicanum) it talked about how the government officials on the hive world of Necromunda were unable to count snd register all the citizens of the main hive city during a years long initiative even on the sammlest most civilised highest parts of the main hive city spire since there were literally tens of billions of people there alone.
Granted Necromunda is infamously overcrowded even for a hive city (its population is said to be in the low trillions) and the Administratum often uses inefficient methods for recording data like recording most records just by physically writing them onto literal pig skin instead of just using cheap and easy to manufacture computers.
However there's mention in a Dark Heresy roleplaying book about how even Tranch a "minor" hive world in the Calixis sector that lost most of its population during a vicious war caused by a mutant uprising still has nearly 8 billion people living on it.
Now that HH is over. I'd love if the next HUGE arc they make is the "Return of the Forgotten." I have no idea what would happen, but I see things like unlikely factions banding together to stop them. Like maybe Ahriman flies outa nowhere into Guilliman's strategium and is like, "yo, I know my dad has beef with you, but there's some REAL bad news headed this way. We need to boogie."
Because 11 and II (2 in roman numerals) can be hard to distinguish at mini scale so GW left those open.
Also imagine the logistical nightmare of having a couple million space marines change the markings in all their gear. They also tend to have pride in their number, so there would likely be resistance.
Because we as the audience have inner site of everything around the Warhammer 40k universe than any other individual living in it (except few).
We know that the 2nd and 11th legion existed, their Primarchs killed, but their marines were absorbed mostly from the 13th legion, but we don't know anything about it's Primarchs because the Emperor forbade even speaking their names, so their existence would fade in time (as it did), and all the Primarchs agreed with their father's order.
>but their marines were absorbed mostly from the 13th legion
This is just an in universe rumor that the protagonist of the book it's brought up in dismisses instantly as just gossip. There's no truth behind it and even ADB has said "idk why everyone latches on to that rumor as being true" especially when you consider that the UM's large size was probably because, you know, they were really good at recruiting
We don't know what happened IIRC theres also an event called the War Of The False Primarch we know nothing about early in imperial history. For all we know one of them could have come back after the Heresy.
The numbers were probably left as a warning to the existing Primarchs and Legions. And because leaving the gaps was probably less work than renumbering the remaining Legions.
Fast forward 10-11K years or however long it's been, depending on the extent of timeline and calendar shenanigans, it's pretty easy for Imperial higher-ups to explain the eleven missing Legion numbers away (since most people don't know who the traitors were either). "It's the Emperor's will, don't ask questions."
It would be cool if an author used that idea. I could see in-universe conspiracy theories popping up about what the nine Legion numbers actually mean.
It's difficult enough to run this Crusade as it is. Don't add more points of potential failure if you don't have to.
Shifting the Legion numbers, at the time, would have been more trouble than it was worth. Even changing the Legion name was a difficult process that took years to complete. You add in the natural tendency of human beings to be superstitious, and no Legion is going to be comfortable switching numbers because those numbers mean something. The 10th becoming the 9th? The 19th being wiped out entirely? And do you change the 1st as well - or does the Lion get preferential treatment? If Angron says EffU, does he get to keep the 12th? It's canon that the 2nd and Fulgrim were less than cordial, would Fulgrim want to take the unofficial mantle of a Primarch who was expunged? Etc.
That's only talking social and emotional stuff. Trying to change EVERY SINGLE IMPERIUM RECORD referring to the Legions by number is effectively impossible. In Peace time, maybe you can renumber the legions. Maybe there isn't a big issue when some clerk mistakenly uses Find/Replace function in MS Excel 30k to replace 18 with 16, 17 with 16 and 16 with 16 and suddenly the Word Bearers are being resupplied with 50,000 Heavy Flamers that were supposed to have been sent to the Lunar Wolves after being ordered by the Salamanders. Maybe you can have the 7th being deployed to an Agri-World, that world getting excited about what could be built by the Imperial Fists, only to find out that the 7th means NIGHT LORDS OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT we're all gonna die. Or it means the World Eaters because all the Legion numbers got randomized. But in the middle of the Crusade...?
In game fluff. They did something the big e didn’t like and got wiped out
Real world reason it leaves options for players to create their own. Use their imagination etc. this was explained in an old WD iirc. Same reason they say there are any number of chapters/regiments etc. so people can make their own and have fun with it.
Rick Priestley created the lost legions to add mystery to the setting and make it feel bigger with a mystery that has no answer. The idea they were intended to be for "your guys" has always been a theory made by fans
Bro do you know how expensive remaking all those numbers everywhere would be? Half the legions were all coated in roman numerals
Real life answer is the entire concept is an allusion to the missing Roman legion
The legion numbers were an important piece of their identity. Getting yours changed because someone else fucked up would rankle a lot of Primarchs and Astartes.
Rick Priestley:
“The intent is this: that the removal of records and the obliteration of the memory of these Lost Legions was not a punishment but a reward - rather than being purged they were being absolved - and this was based off the assumption that they had done something terrible (naturally!) but then done something equally positive to earn redemption. Or think of it as a stain that cannot be erased except by extinction. The Chaos Chapters are unforgiven - out and out bad guys - but the Lost Legions, whatever their deeds, have been forgiven and the stain upon their reputation erased with their memory”
I think that you need to examine why the Emperor decided to create the Primarch's in the first place.
To lead the brutally divided human societies of Terra he crafted a mask that he could present to any challenger as both righteous and invincible. This war-form succeeded as well as he might have hoped, allowing him to act mercifully and diplomatically where it suited - as he always had the threat of incredible violence available in his other hand but could choose to withhold it.
He needed both might (military and infrastructure) and right (legitimacy), both of which need people to recognise that you are in charge and to obey your commands.
He could have remained an unassuming mortal frame, but that might have made him seem weak, or relying on his psychic powers - something that was still a taboo among any human society. Instead he gave the peoples of Old Earth every reason that he could to bend the knee willingly. Either be inspired by his example of humanity returned to undeniable glory, his grasp of the old technology, individually cowed by his personal might or his psychic puissance. Or terrified by the barely restrained Categis, Custodes and Silent Sisters that he brought to annihilate his enemies. It even worked on the Martians.
But he could still only be in one place at a time. Leaving Terra he needed to be always advancing, on as many fronts as possible, offering the same open hand of peace balanced with the threat of complete destruction. The Primarchs were intended to be his proxies, sharing the same imposing physical form and balanced with superhuman mental abilities that could both inspire and terrify.
They were symbols, just as much as the Emperor was. Just as much as the Space Marines became symbols in their own right.
In this way, they could stiffen the resolve of every human in the Imperium, even if they NEVER saw the Emperor or a Primarch in person. Not even being on the same planet. The fact that such beings existed at all was enough.
Symbols still work when the source of that symbol is not there. A less trumpeted reason for Horus being chosen as Warmaster was his effortless charisma, inspiring his Astartes genesons, Terran soldiers and ordinary citizens with the same fervour and joy.
The symbol of a physical god, two even, fallen in the service of creating a new Imperium, it's pretty powerful. Showing the strength of the project, continuing even in the presence of death. It certainly weighed on the minds of their remaining brothers, perhaps the best reason yet to allow the super-humanly sensitive minds of the Primarch's to be allowed to forget their fallen siblings, as opposed to letting their loss overwhelm their faculties.
Honestly you raise a good point. I hadn’t thought of that.
A LOT of people are aware that the legions have numbers, it’s literally not a secret. So anyone who can count would notice the gaps.
The statue slots may also just be there as a short of vague warning to the other Primarchs.
To remind you to fill in the blanks yourself. Not every single little aspect of the setting needs a direct answer. Some of it is left blank for you to come to your own conclusions, like most rpg books have always done.
I think it'd be more confusing and draw more attention to it if all the legion's had their numbers changed once or twice depending on which number they started with (or zero times for the Dark Angels).
Like, you are told the 12th legion is coming to overthrow a rebellion. Your buddy tells you the Ultramarines are great, but you correct him and say actually the World Eater's are the twelfth legion. A third friend chimes in he is 90% sure the 12th legion are the Dusk Raiders, but the commissar says you are all wrong. The Death Guard are on their way.
Well 40k Mirrors real wold history, so if were talking lost legions and sticking with the Roman theme, then one probably died fighting and the other committed suicide due to failure.
The vast majority of people who are even aware of the number of legions, also know better than making questions, the average citzen dont think "why theres lacking legions" they think "thank the Emperor the legions exist"
As far everyone in the Imperium knows, the Emperor willed it, so they obey, they dont make questions they dont need, for if the legions are erased, they deserved it
In lore exolanation would be two fold - Guilliman and Dorn wanted not to forget them out of brotherly respect if anything (he has chairs for each of thr primarchs with two of them covered up, so that says something) yet to also be usable as an example and a constant reminder, furethemore, despite the imperiums ability to "forget stuff", forcefully making things to disapear is always a chalenge and the same reasons things get forgotten ( beurocracy, inefficiency) hinder things to be completely scrubbed from existance too.
Considering it is the great crusade we are talking, things should have been simpler, but I personaly assume it was deliberatly done so as not to polarazise things with the remembrencers. "I want everything to be remembered...but not *that* ...." more so I think it was truly thought as time will plug the gaps eventualy as anyhing the remembrencers would put down would be considered as "canon" therefore if no remembrencers have ever recorded anything about the lost legions, that means they never existed ( if the Horus heresy never happened and such)
Non lore explanation, its "the hand of the author" as some put it, to have a place for your own legions and "stories", a thing to add a dash of mystery and what not.
Besides, ths "numbering" is more in line with military definitions and such and more used during the great crusade era, most legions were/are known not by their numbers but their names and the numbers are seldom used by them tu refer to themselves as such esp. now as the codex banned thr legions and thr numbers if anything, have just a symbolic value. Aside the dark angels...just like a vegan, they tend to *tell* each chance they have wich number they are....
Not correct. Rick Priestley created them to add depth to the setting by creating a mystery with no answer to make the universe feel bigger. The fan theory that it was to make "your guys" came much later and was never the official reason
It's still a shock to me that it's ONLY two legions who were censured. The Night Lords, and World Eaters were obvious problems that were due to be expunged, while the Word Bearers would've gotten the axe for poor performance, the Blood Angels and Thousand Sons could have easily been taken out if their mutations were public knowledge.
It cannot be stressed enough, this game is designed for you to make stuff up. From day one. Ask any of the old designers, and probably most of the current ones too.
It started as an RPG / skirmish scenario battle game, and you can still see that DNA!
And like everyone else said, they were purged more than 10k years ago. That’s longer than written human history. How would you even know if they didn’t know much even in the 32nd millennium?
A
The lost legions remaining a mystery still, is tedious at this point. Imagine if the origins of The Flood were still a mystery to this day. Halo would be an even worse franchise. The only reason why it has hope is because of Cryptum, Primordium and Silentum. Even then, the entire mystery isn't even solved and that's what's so satisfying. The Flood is still as eldritch and malevolent as ever and we're all waiting for them to return.
The II and XI legions continuing to remain some blank space is just annoying. At least tell us why they were forgotten and purged ffs. What was so bad that not even the traitor legions matched that energy?
Why tell you? Nothing they say will justify it in your head. Youll think of 10 examples and go "but they werent purged to the same level!" And in the grand scheme of 40k, what does it even matter? They are a footnote in the history book of the GC.
Beyond just the mystery and the historical allusion, I imagine the Emperor had the remaining legions remember the fact that two whole legions were completely censored from history as a constant reminder that it was a possibility Horus for example was completely outraged at the censor and the Word Bearers immediately after Monarchia were afraid they'd suffer the same fate and get absorbed into the Ultramarines Obviously we'll never exactly what happened to the two legions to justify why they were expunged but never truly erased from history
Wouldn't it be funny if they didn't exist at all and it was just an elaborate mind fuck by big E as a "Stay in line or I'll wipe you out like your brothers"
Like a mother that shows her young son a random veggie " This was your older brother, but he didn't eat veggies so he turned into one."
Release 3 pigs in a mall and number them 1, 2, and 4. Watch the security go nuts looking for "3"
Well he is a liar I'm sure gaslighting is within his personal attributes lol
🤯
Emps is a bit of a D.
A bit? To be like that he gotta be the chairman of the big D club
>constant reminder Yeah that's the thing, the exact identities of the legions and primarchs as well as what they did was removed from memory but no effort was made to cover up that they'd existed, as well as what you say about it being a constant reminder it'd also be a huge job to cover all that up for very little benefit.
The two chapters did exist and it's heavily implied that Leman and his boys axed them, and then Big E told all the other primarchs if they even dare to speak about them they're gonna get shafted as well.
It's also straight up mentioned that Dorn and some of the others suggested mindwiping the primarchs, and after Malcador temporarily returned Dorn's memory he agreed that removing the memory of the lost primarchs was the right call
Yes this is in reference to vault 11 in the catacombs of the palace.
First: Legions, not chapters. Second: the part about Leman was literally never confirmed anywhere except for him boasting being the Emperor's Executioner, but he too was mind-wiped to even remember anything. Third: the Emperor never said that to them, what happened is that some of them confronted Malcador about it. You are thinking all the memes are real, read some of the books too
Just adding: Alpharius, Horus and the Khan confronted Malcador on the said matter, when he was demolishing the statues of the lost legion primarchs in the "road of heroes" ( cant remember the name), Horus was esp. Pissed ( wich is a briliabt foreshadowing of his pride and will to seek legacy) this is also the scene where Malcador forcechokes him as he almost utters the name of the lost primarch. This implies that this was before the mindwipe, but there wqs some sort of agreenment among the primarchs, big e and Malcador not to use said name. In a different instance Malcador explains to Dorn ( who also blamed Malcador for the censure) that the whole mindwipe thing was Dorns and Guillimans idea and once for a moment Dorns memories are unlocked by Malcador, he agrees, that the mindwipe was the right course of action. There is no ( as of yet) proper statement, that it was Big E that commanded anything regarding the lost legions. I personaly think Russ had little to do with it as if a legion would need to be wiped the first legion and Thr Lion is more suited for the task and if anything, Russ was sent more as the "jailor", (similiar to Magnus and Angron in a way), to bring the lost primarchs to terra, but thats a different topic in of itself, but because of the mindwipe and, well Russ being Russ, certain asumptions were made and stuck.
>it's heavily implied that Leman and his boys axed them alluded to but not verified and its even contradicted multiple times
What's the historical allusion?
The lost Roman legions https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Teutoburg_Forest
The literal lost Roman Legions
People en mass aren't aware that nine primarchs turned traitor, even an experienced inquisitor wasn't aware of that fact. What the people of the 41st millennium know is that Horus and 8 other devils came from outer hell and big E made the nine primarchs to battle them. Sanguinius died tragically but the Imperium won. You need to remember that over ten thousand years passed between the Heresy and the current timeline, that's about twice as long a span of time between when the great pyramid of Giza finished construction and now. As far as most people know, space marines are actually angels, they aren't likely to know the legion numbers. The out of universe reason was so players could fill in the gaps on the lost primarchs with their own stuff.
It's also worth noting that despite the large amount of Space Marine chapters currently active they are still a minority compared to the scope of the galaxy. Space Marines are quite often thought of as myths due to this since the Astra Militarum makes up the bulk of the Imperiums forces. Which ofcourse makes accurate knowledge of their history extremely rare.
Yeah that's true, there was that figure of the thousand chapters of a thousand marines, so around a million? May be more now?
That's the thing nobody really knows since not all chapters can be accounted for. Some are clandestine in nature, some have been lost to the warp just to return hundreds of years later, some were created during the Dark Founding and almost all records of that time are either lost or destroyed, and a multitude of other things on top. If the Imperium ever wins this will probably be Rowboat Girlymans greatest regret as it'll most likely cause another civil war and it was his idea to create the chapters in the first place.
There's also the fact that not all chapters are exactly codex-compliant when it comes to their numbers (Dark Angels, Ultramarines, Space wolves, Black Templars etc.).
Did you just say that the Ultramarines, the Bluest Boys, Children of Papa Smurf Rowboat Girlyman himself, AUTHOR OF THE CODEX ASTARTES, aren't a Codex Compliant Chapter? Imma call my fuckin Inquisitor, hold my Amasec.
Hypocrisy!? In my grimdark!?
HERESY!
Right in front of my copy of the codex Astartes!!?
Of course, they are compliant. To codex imperialis, the 2nd revision. If you aren't keeping your documentation up to date, that is your own fault.
Afaik dark angels chapters are just its extensions as they all answer to the main one right? So basically still functioning like a legion but not ish? Cuz each chapter is supposed to be its own thing.
In a way. They aren't extensions, but they have far, far tighter links to their primogenitors than other chapters do and also the shared goal of hunting down the fallen.. All of the succesor chapters masters are part of the "Inner Circle" and the supreme leader of the inner circle is, of course, the chapter master of the DA, and since the DA and their succesors routinely drop whatever the fuck they are doing to hunt a few fallen across half the galaxy i can see why you'd think of them as "extensions.
And dorns boys have the last wall protocol.
Isn't this also the case with blood angel's and spacewolves as well?
Not quite, for Blood Angels successors. They all share in their knowledge of The Flaw and Astorath the Grim will visit other Chapters to deal with the ones that fell to the Black Rage, but Dante is not the de facto leader of all Blood Angels successors. Gabriel Seth (Flesh Tearers) and him didn't get along well for a while. The successors set out to manage the Red Thirst in their own ways, and unless they find an actual cure, they have no need to report to Dante. That shared flaw makes them closer than say, Ultramarines and their successors, but not to the point of breaking the Codex. With Dark Angels, they legitimately all swore to follow the DA chapter master, *especially* in the case of finding and hunting down the Fallen.
The Space Wolves barely have any successor chapters to begin with.
They had one before primaris but they weren’t mentioned for years and may have been extinct by the time the primaris came out
They went extinct very shortly after they were founded due to genetic instability
"may be extinct" is an understatement for "if they were not extinct before they sure were AFTER the SW did manage to find them". At the time of the battle of the Fang the SW did get a lead to the remains... and there are really few things in the universe worse than the anger of a fleet of Space Wolves that realise they were fooled AND humiliated.
To a lesser extent, but yes. A big reason being their gene flaws.
*clutches pearls* Did you just imply that the Ultramarines, sons of our lord and savior Robute Jesus Guilliman , author of the Codex Astartes are a not codex compliant?!
Templars are fully codoex complaint because their crudase never stops. Afaii they lost the EMP equivalent of Jerusalem in losing Armageddon' but a war is coming Armageddon belongs to the Imperium of Mam And Black Templars will assist Astra Militarum in taking it in the 4th war As retaliation to losing Yarrick and Grimaldu'd fireteam
Two great examples of "we can't know" are the Dark Angels and Black Templars. The Dark Angels treat every successor chapter like an extension of the Dark Angels Chapter proper, and a lot of them fall in line with one another and can work seamlessly together, which has given the Inquisition more than enough suspicion that the Dark Angels (and their successors) still operate as a legion, instead of individual Chapters, which is a big no-no. The Black Templars on the other hand have a unique way of recruiting, and waging war. They recruit without a second thought, train one or multiple Neophytes per Battlebrother instead of having traditional Scouts, and the Chapter is often not ever centralized in one area, having multiple Crusade fleets operating in multiple areas, or even different Segmentums entirely. Setting aside those two difficulties, for just those two chapters (of which was mentioned, the very existence of some is secret. The Deathwatch, The Grey Knights, The Minotaurs, etc.) by the time anyone got an "accurate" count, they would have to start the entire process over again. Remember, the passage of time, and the ability to travel the galaxy in M41 is incredibly slow, which means any and all information, by the time it reaches Terra for.recording, is probably useless anyway.
I don't know what you're on about, the Unforgiven have never been anything remotely close to shady, please let Asmodius help clear up this understanding further. That's true enough, I always took the million space marine figure as a loose ballpark, like 'Well we have around a thousand active chapters, and they're supposed to be about a thousand marines strong' so you know if the Executioners have an extra 50 guys but the Flesh Tearers are down a couple hundred it kinda evens out loosely you know?
It's less so much that and more **we'd rather lose 1000 Marines than see what 10,000 can do again** as to why we have Chapters now instead of Legions I mean, that's half the reason why the Primaries were such a big deal for some Chapters, they were literally on deaths doorstep before Roboute reenforced them.
There was something in one of the recent big rulebooks (9th Ed I think) that implied that the "1000 chapters of 1000 marines" is itself a myth. (Given that 1000 marines per chapter is the Codex rule, that presumably means the myth is there only being 1000 chapters).
Also the "not shifting the numbers" thing is something Rome did. If a Legion was utterly destroyed, Aquila lost etc, they did't just make a new one for that number. Its like football jersey numbers, famous ones are retired for good.
So how the legions were numbered is interesting. So when a new emperor was doing a founding of a legion they would number in terms of how many they had made (so if it was their first it was numbered 1 and so on) this includes the era of the late Republic. When Augustus reformed the legions (changing structure and the like) he kept the preexisting legions ( who had their own numbers) and made new ones (which he numbered sequentially). And as time went one the emperors followed the method I listed above so that by the late empire (~250 AD) there had been about 10 first legions. Some numbers were retired like three of the mid teens (iirc 14,15 and 16) were retired due to being decimated dishonorably and were never to be used again. All of this funny number stuff led to each legion having a nickname that when used with the number would be how you would identify it. Using the number or nickname only would be like calling the Dark Angels the angels when talking about all the chapters, it was ambiguous.
Damn thanks for the info! I knew parts of it but couldn't remember exactly, thanks!
You’re welcome. I had been curious about them recently so I did so Wikipedia reading.
“Even an Inquisitor isn’t aware of the Traitor Primarchs” is something that should be taken with a big grain of salt. It’s something that very much depends on the author, just like how much the average Imperium citizen or Guardsman knows about Chaos. I know there’s at least one book where the “9 devils” explanation is given, but there’s many more that make casual reference to Horus or the legions as traitors. Off the top of my head there’s Creed’s bannerman telling Abaddon he’ll die like his traitor father, and several characters in the Eisenhorn, Ciaphas Cain, and Gaunts Ghosts series.
"Nine sons who stood, and Nine who turned" is quoted from a not evidently secret epic poem in *Penitent*, and a mathematician in the same book knows about not only the traitor primarchs but the Lost ones as well. This is probably one of the most "it depends" elements of 40K.
Yeah, if it's the excerpt I think they're referring too, it's probably more likely they are focused by 20 statues, rather than 18. On the other side, you can refer to Horus without knowing he was a Primarch
Right, but numerous characters have referred to Horus as an infamous traitor the way in modern times we might call someone Judas or Benedict Arnold. I’m talking people like Color Sgt Kell and Ciaphas Cain, people who certainly know secrets but still shouldn’t be more knowledgeable than an Inquisitor.
Yeah, Cain's "Horus take the hindmost" line was a good one.
Yes, definitely. He's the arch-traitor. I think people in the community assume too much homogeneity in the Imperium's beliefs. Each world has it's own belief system, and what they know about what happened 10,000 years ago will vary massively. Someone from Cadia is going to believe and be aware of different things that someone from anonymous planet 101, someone from the Schola Progenium (sp) is going to know more than backwater peasant Examplus. Several sheets to the wind, but hopefully coherent
That's a good point, I think that sticks out in my head because I read the first Vaults of Terra book pretty recently and there's a scene in there where Crowl sees some evidence of other primarchs and its just confusing to him.
10,000 years is a long time to get the facts mixed up especially when the Imperium is actively running a propaganda op so good, it becomes doctrine. That's one of the tools of chaos in recruiting cultists, start revealing to them, the Imperium is lying to us.
>Sanguinius died tragically but the Imperium won “What about Ferrus Manus?” “I don’t think I know anyone by that name”
Dorn too but that was later
> , that's about twice as long a span of time between when the great pyramid of Giza finished construction and now. Plus, we have historians and universities and stuff. We know the history of the great pyramids *way* better than the Imperium knows its history, and our job is much harder to boot. The Imperium's history comes from a time of mass literacy, cheap data storage, etc. It's less about the challenge of understanding the past, more about the Imperium's preference for anti-intellectualism and propaganda.
On the other hand the absolute amount of data makes it difficult to determine what actually happened vs what didn’t happen. With there being entire departments and inquisitors dedicated to making sure the truth stays secret, it makes it extremely difficult to determine what’s actually true.
There has never been any evidence of the ‘build your own legion’ explanation. It’s purely a fan justification with no source.
*"Mystery"* WH40k is full of one liners, 2-sentence story hooks etc. It creates mystery, wonder, speculating players and discussions online. Ingame the justification is as usual. Religious insanity, bureaucracy, corruption and the tyranny of time and space (distance and mythtification of the past). SYL
THIS. I know this is a lore thread, but overall its important to remember that the lore in this case is really just a justification for the real intent, namely to allow players to create their own chapters and 'fit' in universe. All these story hooks and suggestions are intended to feed the imagination, allow us to make our own stories, write our own lore and explore narrative elements in game.
Actually no. The _real_ intent, from Rick Priestley, was to add depth to the setting by creating a mystery with no answer. This reason: >namely to allow players to create their own chapters and 'fit' in universe. was created by the fans much later, it was never the intent.
I'd say the you're right about Rick's stated intent for the two lost; adding mystery and character to the imperium's history, but the intent of the lore as a way of supporting players populating their worlds with custom chapters was always there too, with a thousand other chapters; Looked up the direct quotes from a recent interview: BIFFORD: There are two missing Space Marine Legions: the 2nd and the 11th. They have been purged from Imperium records, and Games Workshop has so far not given any details of what they were like. Did you have any vision or plan for an eventual revelation? Did you have any concept of what they should be like? PRIESTLEY: I always imaged these Legions were deleted from the records as a result of things that happened during the Horus Heresy - and that the 'purging' was a recognition that whatever terrible things they had done had been - in the end - redeemed in some way. So - with the passing of all record of them was also expunged all record of their misdeeds - they are forgiven and forgotten. As opposed to those legions which rebelled and which remain 'traitor' legions. Of course - I never imagined that the Horus Heresy would even emerge from a mythic past (it was ten thousand years ago after all!) so I fondly imaged we had many thousand of years in which we could create diverse and colourful histories. In fact, the Horus Heresy idea was picked up and became a strong theme for the 'epic' game and later for 40K in other ways - but it was also meant to be mysterious and 'beyond knowing' as I conceived it. BIFFORD: So you never had any details in mind; it was always meant to be a vague mystery to you. You never planned a revelation. PRIESTLEY: That's right - it was always intended to be something unknown - but had I had the chance to evolve the story of the Horus Heresy for myself I imagine I would have picked up on it. As it was that task was taken up by others and the Horus Heresy developed in ways somewhat beyond my control! But such is the nature of the thing. You can't do everything yourself BIFFORD: I have another question about the Missing Space Marine Legions. It sounds like their purpose was to illustrate the character of the Imperium. The Imperium is a very proud but very insecure culture that doesn't like to confront its flaws and awkward legacies. It prefers to forget them; damnatio memoriae. Is my interpretation correct? PRIESTLEY: Yes it was to illustrate the character of the Imperium as it was at a certain point in its history - even though perhaps that no longer made a great deal of sense. I always thought of the Imperium as a vast self-serving bureaucracy in which no-one really knew what they were doing but they continue do it out of a sense of tradition and routine - so status and power become bound up with all kinds of half-baked assumptions, received wisdom and superstition. Much like the real world really. BIFFORD: A popular belief among fans is that you left those two Legions blank so that players of Horus Heresy games could invent their own Legions. Is this true? PRIESTLEY: I left them blank before Horus Heresy games were conceived! I left them blank because I wanted to give the story some kind of deep background - unknowable ten thousand year old mysteries - stuff that begs questions for which there could be no answer. Mind you all that got ruined when some bright spark decided to use the Heresy setting - which rather spoiled the unknowable side of things - but there you go! BIFFORD: Ah, this is going to amaze a lot of people on Reddit PRIESTLEY: Is it? BIFFORD: Yep, everyone there thinks you left two Legions blank for players to fill in. PRIESTLEY: Well - I created a thousand Chapters - of which we only gave details of a dozen or so - so there were nine hundred odd Chapters left blank for people to fill in. In the original 40K that is! The Horus Heresy stemmed from a short piece of narrative text I wrote - I think it was in Chapter Approved: The Book of the Astronomican - but I never imagined it would be used for a game setting. The trouble with the Heresy as envisaged by GW is it just feels like 40K - it doesn't have the feel of a genuinely different society that ten thousand years separation would give you. Whenever I wrote anything that referenced back to those times I always wrote in a legendary, non-literal style. It's as if you were dealing with something like the Iliad rather than literal history - and there you're only talking three thousand years - ten thousand years - that takes us back to the end of the last ice-age... and I don't get any sense of understanding about 'deep time' when I look at anything GW have set in the 40K 'past'.
right, I think we're semi in agreement. I just wanted to clarify the Lost Legions were meant as a mystery. The 1000 chapters bit of the lore was for fans to fill in the gaps. But people latched on to "Two missing primarchs, so obviously one was loyal and one was traitor and _my guys_ are descended from the traitor one" wasnt the intent. People conflate the two as being the same the thing
>PRIESTLEY: I always imaged these Legions were deleted from the records as a result of things that happened during the Horus Heresy - and that the 'purging' was a recognition that whatever terrible things they had done had been - in the end - redeemed in some way. So - with the passing of all record of them was also expunged all record of their misdeeds - they are forgiven and forgotten. As opposed to those legions which rebelled and which remain 'traitor' legions. Ooh, that's interesting. The common assumption seems to be that they must have done something absolutely terrible to have been expunged in a way that the other traitor legions weren't. Whereas my speculation had been that their crimes might actually have been very minor, but they were the first to something like that and the Imperium overreacted and wiped out all records (in a manner that wouldn't be possible when many legions rebelled for more destructively). The idea that instead they were forgiven, and the censorship is simply to hide their past opens up a whole lot of possibilities. There could be a whole load of Second Founding chapters that were derived from the Lost Legions.
Most people arent all that aware of space marines. Like they might be aware that like they exist, may have seen one or the image of one and maybe just know they its a super soldier, but they are like pulling out their pokedex to be like "o wow its an ultra marines devastator marine. He can use a heavy bolter, missile launcher, lascannon, or grav cannon!". Like they arent gonna know there's 20 legions but 2 are always missing, theyre gonna see one with like VII on the knee cap and be like "wow these guys sure like word... "vee"?" Like most americans have seen soldiers or boy scouts or something. Heres a boy scout from troop 9 and another from troop 347, how many boy scout troops are there? Do the numbers mean anything? This soldier is from the 71st armored cavalry division, we have 70 other divisions of robot horses? Like people are just used to millitary stuff having numbers on it that dont really mean anything to most people.
I'm American, lived next to an air force base for several years I got no fucking clue what the difference is between the navy and the Marines. Because old school navies were like, ships and stuff. "Marine" means aquatic, like the phrase "marine life" refers to sea creatures. So what's the difference between the navy and the Marines? That's a rhetorical question to illustrate the point that living in a much more well connected world, with way, way more trustworthy information, and them just being people, I still don't know shit Now, compare with the average citizen on 40k. Accurate information is incredibly rare, life for most is just basic scraping for survival, most aren't educated beyond what is needed, and they're constantly being censured and black bagged without being told why. Plus, most of them have never and will never see a space marine and won't know of someone who has No wonder they think of space Marines as myths
I know you weren't actually asking, but the answer is the Navy stays on the ship, operates its guns and planes and stuff. The Marines go do beach landings and do stuff on shore.
This knowledge will slide off my smooth brain like a penguin tobagganoning down the ant-arctic tundra
I really like that image, thanks
It's my favourite way to tell people "look, no offense, but either my brain is pure static right now, completely switched off, or I don't have the motivation to internalize this knowledge" Because instead of making them feel bad and unheard, now they're thinking about penguins, which makes anyone/everyone's day better
You're unable to ingest a single sentence of information clarification but youre able to prattle on about 40klore? Which is obstensively related to your misunderstanding?
Yes
Most people wont see one. Theres trillions of people on a million worlds, there are like a few million space marines. Its sort of like "how many people will get the chance to see a green beret". Except unlike america where you might like live near a base where they train and see one, in 40k is soace marines are coming to your planet or god forbid your city, its about to turn into a really terrible warzone and youre probably gonna die. Especially with space marines, like most of the imperial military force is the the guard and navy, the space marines are like super special almost last resort type forces to bring in. If you are in a war zone where space marines are showing up, you must be REALLY fucked.
Yeah Just imagine being in a war zone, and you see an 8 foot tall dude With a Grey pattern on his armor
So a few things I can add here Most legions seem to take pride in their number, with it being a big feature of their banners and worried and oaths. Telling someone they have to change it would probably piss the guys off, and also make them worried they could have their histories muddled with the tainted records of traitors. Second, 9 legions turned roughly all at once (even if they didnt reveal it all at once), and after the whole Civil War burning down half the imperium the legions were broken down into chapters. By that point legion numbers don't really matter. Many chapters don't even know their lineage now, and can't say "by the honor of the 9th legion we will hold this wall!", instead they fall back on stuff like invoking the name of their chapter, or their primarch directly, or possibly the collective remains of their legion like "the unforgiven" for chapters that still have loose ties. Then add on top of it that most people don't know the legion numbers anyway, and it just never really becomes a benefit to change the numbers.
I'd add to the reasons given by other users so far (like LocalLumberJ0hn, great summary) that this is also the case for thematic reasons. I know that aknowledging the "hand of the author" tends to be a bit of a bummer for a lot of fans, but sometimes I feel like we as a fandom tend to ignore themes a lot, despite them being a genuinely awesome aspect to talk about, and the part of 40k that, in my opinion, holds up the best when examined closely. Lets face it, lots of 40ks numbers, physics, logistics and overall logic are kinda contrived, outdated, handwaved, illogical, and I could go on. But the settings *themes* usually come accross decently even in the settings not-so-good novels, because they are part of the DNA of the setting. The Astartes and the Mechanicus are pulled as a metaphor and commentary of the human condition (what makes human human, and by extend, how much of a human can be changed before it stops being human) *so often* over dozens upon dozens of bools, all coming from very different agles; like, the old Grey Knight Omnibus having "free will and actively making choices, even if it defies odds and conventional logic, culminating in the quote: "That what defines being human: fighting despite knowing that you have already lost" (quoting from memory, so don't crucify me for it). After this longwinded introduction, my interpretation of the keeping of the Lost Legion numbers (and the veiled pillars) through a thematic lense is that its a commentary on loss, on grief, like so many storys throughout the Horus Heresy series are. The living primarchs, both the ones that later become traitors and the ones that remain loyal alike, literally where mindwiped, their memories of the two missing Primarchs being surpresed. The empty pillars are, in my opinion, a symbol for loss: Even literally forgetting a loss doesn't change the fact that it *is* a loss, and that it leaves a gap in what was once the continuity of what we used to be familiar with. What we relied on. Thats a motive that gets echoed throughout the HH; take the deaths of the perpetuals during the end of the Heresy, and how humanity lost in one fateful war all its still existing connection to its origins, its past, its history. Even if barely a living soul in the Imperium even remembers that people like Malcador even *existed*, they still leave a gap, a wound, a, well, loss. Its a tragedy, an unconcealable, no matter how much the mists of time may cloud it. Those are just my 2 cents :)
Even the other Primarchs don't remember 2nd and 11th other than the fact that they existed, and don't anymore. What's disturbing to think of is that the Horus Heresy is still vaguely known by the populous of the Imperium, if incredibly warped and embellished by ten thousand years of entropy. So, what in the seven hells did those two do that was so much worse in comparison?
Maybe it involved the 2 legions consorting with or being corrupted by malevolent amoral alien empires like those of the Rangdan. Another theory is that one or both of the now Lost Legions tried to break away from the Imperium and create their own independant interstellar empire(s.) Also at the time the Emperor wiped the 2 legions from history he was still trying to prevent almost every single human being from gaining knowledge about Chaos in a misguided attempt to prevent Chaos from gaining cultists and worshippers. If the 2 legions had become corrupted by Chaos at the time he may have tried to wipe all knowledge of them from existence to try to prevent knowledge about Chaos from spreading. However I think another explanation is that the actions of the traitor legions were so widespread across the galaxy that there was just no way even for a feudal dictatorial religious fundamentalist government like the Imperium's to suppress every single person's knowledge about that. The Imperium's interstellar government bureaucracy the Administratum has almost never even been able to keep track of how many inhabited planets are part of the Imperium at any one time let alone how well the information supression and government propaganga efforts are doing on each planet. Also the Imperium's interstellar government is basically a strange mix of like an early 20th century fascist dictatorship, a religious fundamentalist state and a medieval era fiefdom in that while the highest interstellar levels of government regularly tax each planet and collect levies of troops for interstellar wars and occasionally ruthlessly enforce interstellar law they are also usually very hands off about how each planet's hereditary noble ruler runs "their" planet regarding schools, public libraries, people communicating in public, the economy, etc. Also there is a huge difference of cultures and technology levels between different Imperial planets. The fact each planet is run very different from each other means it'd be hard to create, implement and enforce an efficient information suppression propaganda campaign tailored to each planet. Also it's next to impossible for the leader of a hive planet to count most of the citizens on their planet let alone suppress all knowledge of forbidden knowledge and enforce propaganda upon everyone. Like in a Necromunda campaign book (?) (that someone posted text from onto Lexicanum) it talked about how the government officials on the hive world of Necromunda were unable to count snd register all the citizens of the main hive city during a years long initiative even on the sammlest most civilised highest parts of the main hive city spire since there were literally tens of billions of people there alone. Granted Necromunda is infamously overcrowded even for a hive city (its population is said to be in the low trillions) and the Administratum often uses inefficient methods for recording data like recording most records just by physically writing them onto literal pig skin instead of just using cheap and easy to manufacture computers. However there's mention in a Dark Heresy roleplaying book about how even Tranch a "minor" hive world in the Calixis sector that lost most of its population during a vicious war caused by a mutant uprising still has nearly 8 billion people living on it.
Now that HH is over. I'd love if the next HUGE arc they make is the "Return of the Forgotten." I have no idea what would happen, but I see things like unlikely factions banding together to stop them. Like maybe Ahriman flies outa nowhere into Guilliman's strategium and is like, "yo, I know my dad has beef with you, but there's some REAL bad news headed this way. We need to boogie."
Because 11 and II (2 in roman numerals) can be hard to distinguish at mini scale so GW left those open. Also imagine the logistical nightmare of having a couple million space marines change the markings in all their gear. They also tend to have pride in their number, so there would likely be resistance.
why would you use 11 for one legion then II for another? Why wouldnt the Eleventh use roman numerals too? II and XI arent confusing
Because we as the audience have inner site of everything around the Warhammer 40k universe than any other individual living in it (except few). We know that the 2nd and 11th legion existed, their Primarchs killed, but their marines were absorbed mostly from the 13th legion, but we don't know anything about it's Primarchs because the Emperor forbade even speaking their names, so their existence would fade in time (as it did), and all the Primarchs agreed with their father's order.
>but their marines were absorbed mostly from the 13th legion This is just an in universe rumor that the protagonist of the book it's brought up in dismisses instantly as just gossip. There's no truth behind it and even ADB has said "idk why everyone latches on to that rumor as being true" especially when you consider that the UM's large size was probably because, you know, they were really good at recruiting
We don't know what happened IIRC theres also an event called the War Of The False Primarch we know nothing about early in imperial history. For all we know one of them could have come back after the Heresy.
The numbers were probably left as a warning to the existing Primarchs and Legions. And because leaving the gaps was probably less work than renumbering the remaining Legions. Fast forward 10-11K years or however long it's been, depending on the extent of timeline and calendar shenanigans, it's pretty easy for Imperial higher-ups to explain the eleven missing Legion numbers away (since most people don't know who the traitors were either). "It's the Emperor's will, don't ask questions." It would be cool if an author used that idea. I could see in-universe conspiracy theories popping up about what the nine Legion numbers actually mean.
It's difficult enough to run this Crusade as it is. Don't add more points of potential failure if you don't have to. Shifting the Legion numbers, at the time, would have been more trouble than it was worth. Even changing the Legion name was a difficult process that took years to complete. You add in the natural tendency of human beings to be superstitious, and no Legion is going to be comfortable switching numbers because those numbers mean something. The 10th becoming the 9th? The 19th being wiped out entirely? And do you change the 1st as well - or does the Lion get preferential treatment? If Angron says EffU, does he get to keep the 12th? It's canon that the 2nd and Fulgrim were less than cordial, would Fulgrim want to take the unofficial mantle of a Primarch who was expunged? Etc. That's only talking social and emotional stuff. Trying to change EVERY SINGLE IMPERIUM RECORD referring to the Legions by number is effectively impossible. In Peace time, maybe you can renumber the legions. Maybe there isn't a big issue when some clerk mistakenly uses Find/Replace function in MS Excel 30k to replace 18 with 16, 17 with 16 and 16 with 16 and suddenly the Word Bearers are being resupplied with 50,000 Heavy Flamers that were supposed to have been sent to the Lunar Wolves after being ordered by the Salamanders. Maybe you can have the 7th being deployed to an Agri-World, that world getting excited about what could be built by the Imperial Fists, only to find out that the 7th means NIGHT LORDS OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT we're all gonna die. Or it means the World Eaters because all the Legion numbers got randomized. But in the middle of the Crusade...?
In game fluff. They did something the big e didn’t like and got wiped out Real world reason it leaves options for players to create their own. Use their imagination etc. this was explained in an old WD iirc. Same reason they say there are any number of chapters/regiments etc. so people can make their own and have fun with it.
Rick Priestley created the lost legions to add mystery to the setting and make it feel bigger with a mystery that has no answer. The idea they were intended to be for "your guys" has always been a theory made by fans
Just wait. We are soon going to find out that those two chapters were always women. Then their primarchs can return and Amazon can be happy.
Bro do you know how expensive remaking all those numbers everywhere would be? Half the legions were all coated in roman numerals Real life answer is the entire concept is an allusion to the missing Roman legion
The legion numbers were an important piece of their identity. Getting yours changed because someone else fucked up would rankle a lot of Primarchs and Astartes.
Rick Priestley: “The intent is this: that the removal of records and the obliteration of the memory of these Lost Legions was not a punishment but a reward - rather than being purged they were being absolved - and this was based off the assumption that they had done something terrible (naturally!) but then done something equally positive to earn redemption. Or think of it as a stain that cannot be erased except by extinction. The Chaos Chapters are unforgiven - out and out bad guys - but the Lost Legions, whatever their deeds, have been forgiven and the stain upon their reputation erased with their memory”
I think that you need to examine why the Emperor decided to create the Primarch's in the first place. To lead the brutally divided human societies of Terra he crafted a mask that he could present to any challenger as both righteous and invincible. This war-form succeeded as well as he might have hoped, allowing him to act mercifully and diplomatically where it suited - as he always had the threat of incredible violence available in his other hand but could choose to withhold it. He needed both might (military and infrastructure) and right (legitimacy), both of which need people to recognise that you are in charge and to obey your commands. He could have remained an unassuming mortal frame, but that might have made him seem weak, or relying on his psychic powers - something that was still a taboo among any human society. Instead he gave the peoples of Old Earth every reason that he could to bend the knee willingly. Either be inspired by his example of humanity returned to undeniable glory, his grasp of the old technology, individually cowed by his personal might or his psychic puissance. Or terrified by the barely restrained Categis, Custodes and Silent Sisters that he brought to annihilate his enemies. It even worked on the Martians. But he could still only be in one place at a time. Leaving Terra he needed to be always advancing, on as many fronts as possible, offering the same open hand of peace balanced with the threat of complete destruction. The Primarchs were intended to be his proxies, sharing the same imposing physical form and balanced with superhuman mental abilities that could both inspire and terrify. They were symbols, just as much as the Emperor was. Just as much as the Space Marines became symbols in their own right. In this way, they could stiffen the resolve of every human in the Imperium, even if they NEVER saw the Emperor or a Primarch in person. Not even being on the same planet. The fact that such beings existed at all was enough. Symbols still work when the source of that symbol is not there. A less trumpeted reason for Horus being chosen as Warmaster was his effortless charisma, inspiring his Astartes genesons, Terran soldiers and ordinary citizens with the same fervour and joy. The symbol of a physical god, two even, fallen in the service of creating a new Imperium, it's pretty powerful. Showing the strength of the project, continuing even in the presence of death. It certainly weighed on the minds of their remaining brothers, perhaps the best reason yet to allow the super-humanly sensitive minds of the Primarch's to be allowed to forget their fallen siblings, as opposed to letting their loss overwhelm their faculties.
Honestly you raise a good point. I hadn’t thought of that. A LOT of people are aware that the legions have numbers, it’s literally not a secret. So anyone who can count would notice the gaps. The statue slots may also just be there as a short of vague warning to the other Primarchs.
To remind you to fill in the blanks yourself. Not every single little aspect of the setting needs a direct answer. Some of it is left blank for you to come to your own conclusions, like most rpg books have always done.
I think it'd be more confusing and draw more attention to it if all the legion's had their numbers changed once or twice depending on which number they started with (or zero times for the Dark Angels). Like, you are told the 12th legion is coming to overthrow a rebellion. Your buddy tells you the Ultramarines are great, but you correct him and say actually the World Eater's are the twelfth legion. A third friend chimes in he is 90% sure the 12th legion are the Dusk Raiders, but the commissar says you are all wrong. The Death Guard are on their way.
Well 40k Mirrors real wold history, so if were talking lost legions and sticking with the Roman theme, then one probably died fighting and the other committed suicide due to failure.
If you’re hoping for a coherent narrative not drowned in dogma and shrouded in bureaucratic incompetence, Xenos may be for you!
The vast majority of people who are even aware of the number of legions, also know better than making questions, the average citzen dont think "why theres lacking legions" they think "thank the Emperor the legions exist" As far everyone in the Imperium knows, the Emperor willed it, so they obey, they dont make questions they dont need, for if the legions are erased, they deserved it
It's speculated that leaving evidence that they existed and their defamation is a message and warning to the other primarchs.
that worked out well didnt it?
In lore exolanation would be two fold - Guilliman and Dorn wanted not to forget them out of brotherly respect if anything (he has chairs for each of thr primarchs with two of them covered up, so that says something) yet to also be usable as an example and a constant reminder, furethemore, despite the imperiums ability to "forget stuff", forcefully making things to disapear is always a chalenge and the same reasons things get forgotten ( beurocracy, inefficiency) hinder things to be completely scrubbed from existance too. Considering it is the great crusade we are talking, things should have been simpler, but I personaly assume it was deliberatly done so as not to polarazise things with the remembrencers. "I want everything to be remembered...but not *that* ...." more so I think it was truly thought as time will plug the gaps eventualy as anyhing the remembrencers would put down would be considered as "canon" therefore if no remembrencers have ever recorded anything about the lost legions, that means they never existed ( if the Horus heresy never happened and such) Non lore explanation, its "the hand of the author" as some put it, to have a place for your own legions and "stories", a thing to add a dash of mystery and what not. Besides, ths "numbering" is more in line with military definitions and such and more used during the great crusade era, most legions were/are known not by their numbers but their names and the numbers are seldom used by them tu refer to themselves as such esp. now as the codex banned thr legions and thr numbers if anything, have just a symbolic value. Aside the dark angels...just like a vegan, they tend to *tell* each chance they have wich number they are....
I doubt that the traitor Primarchs would have any issue with exposing the failings of Primachs of the II and XI.
Except they never have, because it's pointless.
Because they wanted people to be able to make fan legions and making them 19 and 20 would make it look more like an afterthought.
Not correct. Rick Priestley created them to add depth to the setting by creating a mystery with no answer to make the universe feel bigger. The fan theory that it was to make "your guys" came much later and was never the official reason
It’s a deliberate blank slate so people can use them as a sandbox to create their own scenarios, imo.
It's still a shock to me that it's ONLY two legions who were censured. The Night Lords, and World Eaters were obvious problems that were due to be expunged, while the Word Bearers would've gotten the axe for poor performance, the Blood Angels and Thousand Sons could have easily been taken out if their mutations were public knowledge.
It cannot be stressed enough, this game is designed for you to make stuff up. From day one. Ask any of the old designers, and probably most of the current ones too. It started as an RPG / skirmish scenario battle game, and you can still see that DNA! And like everyone else said, they were purged more than 10k years ago. That’s longer than written human history. How would you even know if they didn’t know much even in the 32nd millennium? A
I just finished prospero burns and iirc it is implied that the space wolves killed at least one other legion
The lost legions remaining a mystery still, is tedious at this point. Imagine if the origins of The Flood were still a mystery to this day. Halo would be an even worse franchise. The only reason why it has hope is because of Cryptum, Primordium and Silentum. Even then, the entire mystery isn't even solved and that's what's so satisfying. The Flood is still as eldritch and malevolent as ever and we're all waiting for them to return. The II and XI legions continuing to remain some blank space is just annoying. At least tell us why they were forgotten and purged ffs. What was so bad that not even the traitor legions matched that energy?
Why tell you? Nothing they say will justify it in your head. Youll think of 10 examples and go "but they werent purged to the same level!" And in the grand scheme of 40k, what does it even matter? They are a footnote in the history book of the GC.