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The 2 Unknown Primarchs

3K views 15 replies 9 participants last post by  FabricatorGeneralMike 
#1 ·
Hey, i'm just wondering who they were and why they were deleted from imperial records- anyone know?

Or was this just done so folk can create their own chapters?
 
#2 ·
trub said:
Hey, i'm just wondering who they were and why they were deleted from imperial records- anyone know?

Or was this just done so folk can create their own chapters?
This is one of those questions that pop up on every online Warhammer forum every so often; you can probably do a search and find long and extensive debates on the missing Primarchs, but I’ll do you a favour and just recapitulate what conclusions are usually reached.

No one knows who the Primarchs were or why they were deleted. In the old days of Rogue Trader, there was a connection between the Warhammer 40,000 and Warhammer Fantasy universes game-wise; units and weapons could be switched relatively freely between the two gaming system, and the fluff stated that Warhammer Fantasy was all happening on a planet in (or possibly after) the Warhammer 40,000 universe. Some people claimed that Sigmar of Warhammer Fantasy might be one of the missing Primarchs that was just never recovered by the Emperor due to the warp storms surrounding the Warhammer Fantasy planet. However, the connection between the two Warhammer universes were later severed by Games Workshop, and so today it is entirely impossible for Sigmar to be a Primarch, and we’re right back where we started, knowing nothing. And that has been the status quo ever since.

As for people making up their own First Founding Legions or Chapters based on the missing First Founding Legions, it is generally frowned upon by the fluff nuts; it makes no sense in the context of the 40,000 fluff to have a Chapter turn up and claim to be descendants of the long-long missing Legions, and if every home-made Chapter to make this claim were actually descendant from the missing Legions, there would be no way the Legions could ever have gone missing in the first place, what with them having to vastly outnumber all other Space Marines in the galaxy for this to be possible. :rolleyes: ;)

So put shortly, no, we don’t know why the missing Legions are missing and why they were deleted from Imperial records. It might be Games Workshop’s method of providing an opening for home-made First Founding Chapters, but even so it’s usually considered terribly cliché to jump on the bandwagon and actually make a home-made First Founding Chapter.

Of course, there’s also the Hidden Legions conspiracy theory, although that is pure fan fiction… ;)

~Grephaun.
 
#4 ·
I won’t be making a sticky thread of a single question like this one; if we were to make stickies of all common fluff questions we wouldn’t be able to post on the two first pages of the subforum due to sticky threads.

Rather, I’m thinking we should be lenient and forgive new members if they post old questions; until we get a fluff site similar to Critical Hit, there’s really not anywhere else to ask these questions (Wikipedia is extensive, but not always enough.)

~Greph.
 
#6 ·
No one knows who the Primarchs were or why they were deleted. In the old days of Rogue Trader, there was a connection between the Warhammer 40,000 and Warhammer Fantasy universes game-wise; units and weapons could be switched relatively freely between the two gaming system, and the fluff stated that Warhammer Fantasy was all happening on a planet in (or possibly after) the Warhammer 40,000 universe.
I always was under the impression that if the Warhammer universe was taking place within the 40k universe that it actually would be placed considerably before the time setting of 40k. Why? Because the collapse of the warp gates and the withdrawl/death of the old ones seems to be strongly connected to the eradication of the old ones in ancient times in 40k (Via the encrons and later the enslaver plague). The subsequent invasion of the warhammer world by legions upon legions of daemons seems to practically beg enslavers and if you read about how the daemons at those times would possess psykers("wizards") and then summon more of their brethren it seems even more like Enslavers.

Personally the way thing add up I would say that if you were going to place Fantasy within 40k it would have happened alongside the war in heaven and invasion of the galaxy via the Enslavers. To taht extent I know there are incidences of things taht seem vaguely imperial showing up in fanatasy(the Albion campaign being one) but then again these relics could just as easily been Old one relics that bear similarities to later imperial ones.
 
#7 ·
Well, I can only tell you what was the official fluff of Games Workshop at the time; keep in mind that this was before Third Edition 40k (unfortunately I’m unsure what Edition Fantasy was used at the time), so the Necrons and the Enslavers were not invented yet, nor was the War in Heaven. Trying to fit the Warhammer Fantasy world into our modern 40k universe makes no sense whatsoever because all connections between the two universes have been severed and the fluff has diverged too much for it to be possible.

Your idea of having Warhammer Fantasy taking place alongside the War in Heaven is creative, but alas impossible; the War in Heaven happened some 60 million years prior to the rise of human civilisation, before our species even existed. Also, the Chaos Gods didn’t exist at this time either, but were only just being formed from conglomerations of emotions sparked by the War, and the Fall of Eldar had not yet given birth to Slaanesh and the Dark Eldar. Since Slaanesh is present in Warhammer Fantasy, Fantasy must necessarily take place after the beginning of the 31th millennium.

The old fluff from Games Workshop first placed Warhammer Fantasy in the 40k universe, just cut off from it by a massive warp storm. Then Warhammer Fantasy was moved forward in time compared to 40k, so that it happened after 40k, the explanation being that Warhammer Fantasy is the last fertile planet left after the inevitable apocalypse that destroyed the rest of the galaxy, where the last pitiful remains of the sentient races are fighting with what primitive technology they can scavenge from the ruins of their former glory.

However, with the coming of the Necron, Tyranid, and Tau races to 40k and the Undead and Saurian races to Fantasy, the two universes are too different to match seamlessly. It is of course possible to come up with interesting and inventive theories to explain the absence and presence of various races – I’ve made a few of my own in the past – but regardless of the brilliance of our home-made fluff, Games Workshop still tells us that the two universes are not connected, and we just can’t work around that. :hmm:

Still, theorising is fun. ;)

~Grephaun.
 
#8 · (Edited)
Grephaun said:
keep in mind that this was before Third Edition 40k (unfortunately I’m unsure what Edition Fantasy was used at the time), so the Necrons and the Enslavers were not invented yet, nor was the War in Heaven.
The War in Heaven was, but it was portrayed (albeit sketchily) as a war between Khaine and Isha, Kurnos & Vaul over the rules created by Asuryan regarding their Eldar "children".

To address the original question, my bet is that they're explained in the fluff as traitor legions who got wiped out during the Heresy. There's a lovely quote in the 3rd ed rulebook about "the meaning of victory", which includes expunging all record of your enemy's existence from history. Although then the question of why they haven't cut them out completely (ie only had 18 primarchs) crops up.
 
#9 ·
Xerxes said:
The War in Heaven was, but it was portrayed (albeit sketchily) as a war between Khaine and Isha, Kurnos & Vaul over the rules created by Asuryan regarding their Eldar "children".
Yes, I am aware that there are in fact two “Wars in Heaven�, one being an actual war featuring the C’Tan and Necrons against the Old Ones and their new races, and the other being a legend of ancient Eldar mythology. Exactly how the mythical War is supposed to be interpreted in relation to the current fluff, I’m unsure; it could be a metaphorical or allegorical tale constructed to artfully explain the earliest Eldar history, or it could be the recount of an actual war between various warp entities created by the Eldar. However, I keep a distinct separation between that War in Heaven and the one featuring the C’Tan and the Old Ones, and it was the latter I was referring to above. ;)

Xerxes said:
To address the original question, my bet is that they're explained in the fluff as traitor legions who got wiped out during the Heresy. There's a lovely quote in the 3rd ed rulebook about "the meaning of victory", which includes expunging all record of your enemy's existence from history. Although then the question of why they haven't cut them out completely (ie only had 18 primarchs) crops up.
Well, it is an explanation, even if there are some inconsistencies. I doubt we’ll ever see an official explanation, though; it’s just one of the many mysteries of the 40k universe. Gives us the opportunity to theorise, though. ;)

~Greph.
 
#11 ·
Maybe the two missing Primarchs were to allow absolute flexibility when creating your own SM chapter. Just making it conveniently so that there are 2 missing primarchs, the usual no. of contestants in a game. This way each player can have a comletely unique Chapter and not worry about beaver-slap fights started over who the primarch belobgs to.

Maybe, just maybe...
 
#12 ·
*Bing* Sorry, that was my Sickeningly Overused Cliché meter going "bing."

By now there are enough chapters descended from the two missing Primarchs to make another sixty Space Marine Legions. That explanation is used by lazy people who don't want to write a story themselves, and instead come up with slap about being lost in the warp for ten thousand years and, also, awesome Dark Age technology and, like, super-cool Space Marine abilities that no other Space Marines have but we do because we've been around since, like, the Heresy n'stuff, and, oh yeah, our Primarch is still alive and he's this custom-made S10 T6 model right there, and he's like a Dreadnought but he's a psyker so he has all the Librarian psychic powers except he doubles the range and doesn't have to take a psychic test because he's just that awesome and I'm so cool look how cool I am please god pay attention to me.

You see my point?
 
#14 ·
I hate to say it, but I must agree with ze poodle.

I for one am pretty sick of hearing about the missing primachs.

They're not on the records. Imperial modus opperandi dictates that normally something is only deleted from the records either because it's well and truly dead, or because it never existed. My guess is either the Primarchs died, or they were never found (and will have died of old age anyway, probably after having a grand old time rulling planet 'Insignificance V' with an army of concubines and lots of food and drink) and the legions ran out of geneseed eventually and became extinct.

Either way, he's dead Jim.
 
#16 ·
The_Giant_Mantis said:
They're not on the records. Imperial modus opperandi dictates that normally something is only deleted from the records either because it's well and truly dead, or because it never existed.
Either way, he's dead Jim.

Off Topic, for a great look at how a Imperial Deletion team workes read the second SoulDrinkers book, First chapter. I thought it was rather amusing. Force marching through the imperial libaruis for a few weeks. But thats just me :ninja:


And Yes, either they where never found or had a deletion team sent out for them, to be deleted from imperial records is rather harsh. I mean the ones who rebelled and turned traitor are still on record soo, something really really bad happened . Fluff wise its just to make the 40k universe more mysterious. So short answer no, we dont know what happened to them, long answer no we probley never will know what happened to them.:yes:
 
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