Primarch
This article is about the Space Marine Primarchs; for the Anthology, see The Primarchs (Anthology). |
The Primarchs were the twenty genetically-engineered "sons" of the Emperor of Mankind, and the genetic "fathers" of the Space Marine Legions. The Emperor used his own DNA in their creation, and they were designed to be far superior to the average human: immensely larger, stronger, hardier, faster, and more intelligent. They were also incredibly charismatic, as their main role was to be generals and leaders of the Imperial military. Each had their own purpose and specialty, allowing them to serve in specific functions that the Emperor's forces would need in reconquering the galaxy.
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Creation of the Primarchs
They were created in a secret underground laboratory on Luna under the tightest security. According to Ingethel the Ascended, the Primarchs were created by the Emperor with the aid of forbidden sciences and arcane lore derived from the Warp.[14a] Eldrad Ulthran also states that the Emperor utilized dark powers to construct the Primarchs.[19] It is speculated the Primarch's were imbued with energies and knowledge that the Emperor gained in a Warp Portal on Molech.[20] However, the Gods of Chaos somehow managed to spirit them away just prior to their maturation with a great Warp vortex[9] and it is speculated that they also managed to tamper with the infant Primarchs. The scattering of the Primarch's may have been the result of a Causal Loop created when Argel Tal and his men were sent back in time inside the Eye of Terror to the Emperor's laboratory, as they were convinced by Ingethel the Ascended to destroy the Gellar Fields protecting the infants from the touch of the Chaos Gods. Almost immediately after the Gellar Field generators were disabled, the Primarch's were sucked into a Warp vortex.[14a] Several Primarchs including Konrad Curze, Roboute Guilliman, and even Sanguinius all came to believe that the scattering of the Primarch's and their upbringing on distant worlds had all been engineered by the Emperor.[23]
Scattered across the galaxy, beyond the Emperor's reach, and all landed on different worlds vastly separated from their Father. The Emperor could sense that the infant Primarchs were alive, but was unable to reach them. Therefore he used their previously collected DNA samples to create the Space Marines. The genetic material of each one of the Primarchs was used to found a single Space Marine Legion, twenty in total. The new homeworlds of the infant Primarchs and subsequent experiences on those worlds would influence and mold them to a large extent. There they quickly grew to adulthood and often rose to power, ruling, leading, and helping the inhabitants. As the Emperor found them, he was generally pleased by their actions, and quickly gave them the leadership of their respective legion.
While Arkhan Land aided the Emperor in investigating the nature of Angron and his Butcher's Nails, the Emperor explained that he had no emotional attachment to the Primarchs because they were tools and weapons. When asked why the Emperor allowed the Primarchs to call him father although he felt no attachment, the Emperor described the Pinnochio story and it is natural for a creation to refer to a creator as father.[25]
Rediscovery
The first Primarch to be found was Horus, who became the Emperor's favourite. Most Primarchs somehow recognised the Emperor on sight, and immediately pledged their allegiance on the spot. A few, (Leman Russ, Ferrus Manus and Vulkan) only followed him after being bested in contests. Angron refused, and was abducted from his homeworld, something he never really accepted. The last to be found was Alpharius.
The overall order of the rediscovery of each Primarch by the Emperor is as follows[17]
- Horus
- Leman Russ
- DELETED FROM IMPERIAL RECORDS
- Ferrus Manus
- Fulgrim
- Vulkan
- Rogal Dorn
- Roboute Guilliman
- Magnus the Red
- Sanguinius
- Lion El'Jonson
- Perturabo
- Mortarion
- Lorgar
- Jaghatai Khan
- Konrad Curze
- Angron
- Corax
- DELETED FROM IMPERIAL RECORDS
- Alpharius Omegon
At the end of the Great Crusade Warmaster Horus fell to Chaos, and eight of his fellow Primarchs followed him against the Emperor, resulting in a full-scale civil war known as the Horus Heresy. Each Primarch chose his side, loyalists against traitors, leading their legions against their former comrades.
Legion Number | Name | Alternate Name | Homeworld | Name of the Legion | Allegiance | Current Status | Image |
I | Lion El'Jonson | The Lion | Caliban | Dark Angels | Loyal | Alive, asleep within a secret chamber on the Rock. | |
II | Deleted from Imperial records, authorization unknown. | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
III | Fulgrim | The Phoenician | Chemos | Emperor's Children | Traitor | Daemon Prince on a hidden planet of unending pleasure[8a] | |
IV | Perturabo | The Lord of Iron | Olympia | Iron Warriors | Traitor | Daemon Prince, ruler of Medrengard. | |
V | Jaghatai Khan | The Great Khan, The Warhawk | Mundus Planus | White Scars | Loyal | Unknown, disappeared into the Webway. | |
VI | Leman Russ | The Wolf King, The Great Wolf | Fenris | Space Wolves | Loyal | Unknown, disappeared into the Eye of Terror. | |
VII | Rogal Dorn | The Emperor's Champion, The Praetorian of Terra | Inwit | Imperial Fists | Loyal | Died in a Black Crusade. | |
VIII | Konrad Curze | The Night Haunter, The Lord of the Night | Nostramo | Night Lords | Traitor | Dead, assassinated by Callidus assassin M'Shen. | |
IX | Sanguinius | The Great Angel | Baal | Blood Angels | Loyal | Dead, slain by Horus. | |
X | Ferrus Manus | The Gorgon | Medusa | Iron Hands | Loyal | Dead, slain by Fulgrim and his head offered to Horus. | |
XI | Deleted from Imperial records, authorisation unknown. | ||||||
XII | Angron | The Red Angel, The Lord of the Red Sands | Nuceria | World Eaters | Traitor | Daemon Prince. | |
XIII | Roboute Guilliman | The Battle King, The Avenging Son | Macragge | Ultramarines | Loyal | Mortally wounded by Fulgrim currently held in stasis, rumoured to be healing. | |
XIV | Mortarion | The Death Lord | Barbarus | Death Guard | Traitor | Daemon Prince, ruler of the Plague Planet. | |
XV | Magnus the Red | The Crimson King, The Red Cyclops | Prospero | Thousand Sons | Traitor | Daemon Prince, ruler of the Planet of Sorcerers. | |
XVI | Horus Lupercal | The Warmaster, The First Primarch | Cthonia | Luna Wolves/Sons of Horus | Traitor | Dead, slain by the Emperor. | |
XVII | Lorgar Aurelian | The Urizen, The Golden One | Colchis | Word Bearers | Traitor | Daemon Prince, ruler of Sicarus. | |
XVIII | Vulkan | The Lord of Drakes | Nocturne | Salamanders | Loyal | Unknown, disappeared in battle against The Beast during the War of the Beast | |
XIX | Corvus Corax | The Raven-Lord | Deliverance | Raven Guard | Loyal | Unknown, disappeared, last seen heading for the Eye of Terror. | |
XX | Alpharius Omegon | The Last Primarch, The Lord of Serpents | Unknown | Alpha Legion | Traitor | Status unclear. Alpharius was apparently slain by Rogal Dorn in the Battle of Pluto during the Horus Heresy. Omegon assumed his mantle thereafter.[24] After the Heresy, Alpharius (or Omegon) was reported slain by Roboute Guilliman. (It is not known which of the twins were truly killed. The reliability of this information is disputed, therefore it is possible that both Alpharius and Omegon are still alive.) |
Fate of the Primarchs
Traitors
- Warmaster Horus was killed by the Emperor of Mankind, and his soul was obliterated. His corpse was completely destroyed by Abaddon the Despoiler, who also took over his place as overall leader of the Chaos Space Marines.
- Magnus rose to the rank of Daemon Prince of Tzeentch.
- Angron rose to the rank of Daemon prince of Khorne.
- Mortarion rose the rank of Daemon Prince of Nurgle.
- Fulgrim rose to the rank of Daemon Prince of Slaanesh.
- Lorgar rose to the rank of Daemon Prince of Chaos Undivided.
- Perturabo rose to the rank of Daemon Prince of Chaos Undivided.
- Konrad Curze, aka Night Haunter, was assassinated by Callidus assassin M'Shen. He allowed her infiltration, apparently wanting to die.
- Alpharius Omegon, Alpharius was apparently killed by Rogal Dorn during the Battle of Pluto, and Omegon assumed his title afterwards.[24] After the Heresy, Alpharius (or perhaps in reality Omegon) was reported killed by Roboute Guilliman on Eskrador. But the source which reported his death may have been manipulated. It is not known if Alpharius or Omegon is the Primarch killed in the report. Due to the report's unreliability, neither may have been killed.[8].
Loyalists
- Ferrus Manus was killed at the Drop Site massacre at the start of the Horus Heresy by Fulgrim who presented his head to Horus.
- Sanguinius was slain by Horus after refusing to join him during the Battle of Terra.
- Lion El'Jonson returned to his homeworld of Caliban only to discover that his friend and second-in command Luther and the Dark Angel garrison had turned against him[2]. He led a strike force of his own loyal Dark Angels against the traitors. He disappeared in the resulting inferno as the world was blasted apart by a Warp Storm and a bombardment from his ships in orbit. He sleeps deep within the Rock, the biggest piece of Caliban and current home base of the Dark Angels[1,2]. Only the Emperor and the Watchers in the Dark know of this secret.[1-p14]
- Jaghatai Khan disappeared while pursuing the Dark Eldar into a Webway portal after they had managed to raid Mundus Planus. There are rumours that he fights there still, lost in the twisting paths of the Webway. After nine thousand years it seems highly unlikely, but not impossible.
- Leman Russ disappeared in the Eye of Terror. The Space Wolves hold a legend that says Russ went on a quest to find a means to cure the Emperor. His final words before his disappearance is that he would return for the 'Wolftime' (the final battle). It is also said that Leman Russ led the 13th Company into the Eye of Terror and ordered them to hunt down the Traitor Legions which had fled to the Eye of Terror, particularly the Thousand Sons.
- Rogal Dorn boarded a Chaos cruiser during a Black Crusade alongside a company of his sons and died fighting. Today, his hand is housed in the holiest shrine of the Imperial Fists chapter, and his dead body encased in amber and put in Phalanx [11].
- Roboute Guilliman was struck down with an envenomed blade by his former brother Fulgrim. His body is perfectly preserved in a stasis field at the heart of the Temple of Correction[3]. It is rumoured that he is still alive and that his wound is slowly healing, something normally impossible in a stasis field. The truth of this rumour is unknown but this is seen by many (including Captain Uriel Ventris) as mere optimistic thinking.
- Vulkan disappeared. The position of Chapter Master, filled by the Captain of the First Company, is considered to be a regency as the Salamanders believe that Vulkan will one day return and lead them on a great crusade against Chaos.
- Corax was racked by guilt and shame. In order to rebuild quickly the strength of his legion from the dropsite massacre on Isstvan V, Corax accelerated the growth of the gene-seed organs, producing more Space Marines, but this process also deteriorated the Gene-seed, causing many to become hulking monsters. Riddled with guilt over what he had done, Corax administered euthanasia to all of them and then locked himself away within his sanctum, the Raven's Tower. Exactly one year later he left his tower, haggard and gaunt, and took a small shuttle craft with the words Never more. It was last monitored setting a course for the Eye of Terror.
Two unknown Primarchs
Almost nothing is known about the two unknown primarchs.
References to the second and eleventh Primarchs are made in the short story, The Lighting Tower[12], in which Rogal Dorn describes the plinths on which their statues stand should be vacant and says that 'no one ever spoke of those two absent brothers. Their separate tragedies had seemed like aberrations. Had they, in fact, been warnings that no one had heeded?' Also in The First Heretic, Lorgar makes several references saying that the Emperor ordered them to be forgotten. During the time five Word Bearer captains spent being shown secrets of the galaxy by the daemon Ingethel they are shown the Emperor's gene-labs where he is creating the Primarchs and the moment that they were scattered by Chaos. During their time wandering the labs as insubstantial ghosts undetectable as long as they don't touch anything they speak of the two lost legions, mentioning how they were erased from Imperial records and how Roboute Guilliman's Ultramarines legion mysteriously swelled in numbers each time one of the two legions was "erased." The implication seems clear that at least part of the fighting force of the "lost" legions was entrusted to Roboute Guilliman and incorporated into the Ultramarines.[14]
Note: If this is true then perhaps entire chapters descended from the original Ultramarines legion are in fact part of the gene-seed of the two lost legions. At the time of the Heresy remarks made by the five Word Bearers captains Argel Tal, Xaphen, Torgal, Malnor and Dagotal suggest that the fate of the lost legions is relatively common knowledge though kept hushed up. In the intervening ten millennia between the Heresy and the current age of the 41st millennium it is likely this information was forgotten. It is an interesting side-note that the lost legions were numbers two and eleven. Two plus eleven equals thirteen-the number of the Ultramarines legion.[14]
The traitor Primarchs in this story are covered with a shroud, so the fate of the second and eleventh is undetermined. They may have been found and befell a tragedy as it implies they were spoken about previously.
In the novel Prospero Burns by Dan Abnett, it is suggested that Leman Russ and his Space Wolves legion had been used by the Emperor in the past to cull/pacify the two legions and that the Emperor had created the Wolves for just an event, utilizing their barbaric, untamed nature as a sort of insurance policy for use against other Space Marine Legions. This is further demonstrated by the unleashing of the Wolves on the Thousand Sons Legion in the same novel.[18]
Clones
There have been several instances of cloned Primarchs, the result being a mentally unstable, confused, and sometimes deformed creature. The first cloned primarch was Ferrus Manus, created by Fabius Bile at the demand of a mad Fulgrim. Fulgrim attempted to again convert Ferrus to his cause before killing him once more, a process that was repeated multiple times with new clones.[21]
Perhaps the most notable example of a cloned Primarch was after the Horus Heresy, where Fabius Bile again cloned a son of the Emperor, this time Horus from DNA provided by the Warmaster's corpse. Confused and senile, this clone of Horus didn't initially recognize many of his closest comrades such as Ezekyle Abaddon and proved a poor imitation of the real Lupercal. Abaddon killed the clone, and in its dying moments it recognized who the First Captain was. During the same period, Bile attempted to clone all twenty Primarch's from gathered samples, the result being a hall of pods with monstrosities and deformed adolescent creatures. All of these abominations were killed by Abaddon and his forces.[22]
Canon Conflicts
Gregor Eisenhorn refers to the "Primarch" of the White Consuls Space Marine Chapter, when stating that he made it a point to commend a heroic Sergeant who saved his life, at the cost of the Sergeant's own, on Thracian Primaris. Since the White Consuls are a Successor Chapter, and because there are no living or active primarchs within the Imperium, he seems to be using the term "Primarch" interchangeably with that of Chapter Master.[5]
Sources
- 1: Codex: Angels of Death (2nd Edition)[Needs Citation]
- 2: Angels of Darkness by Gav Thorpe[Needs Citation]
- 3: Nightbringer by Graham McNeill[Needs Citation]
- 4: Hell in a Bottle (Short Story) by Simon Jowet
- 5: Malleus (Novel) by Dan Abnett: Chapter Seven, page 89
- 6: Codex Imperialis, section previewed in White Dwarf 166
- 7: Codex: Ultramarines (2nd Edition)[Needs Citation]
- 8: Index Astartes IV[Needs Citation]
- 8a: The Emperor's Children (Post-Heresy)
- 9: False Gods by Graham McNeill, Chapters 15-16
- 10: Renegades by Andy Chambers, Jervis Johnson & Rick Priestley[Needs Citation]
- 11: Space Marine (Novel) by Ian Watson[Needs Citation]
- 12: The Lightning Tower by Dan Abnett, page 9
- 13: Codex: Space Marines (5th Edition), Page 8
- 14: The First Heretic (Novel) by Aaron Dembski-Bowden, Chapter 17, pages 295-296
- 14a: The First Heretic, Chapter 17, pg.300-301
- 15: The Primarchs (Anthology): Cover Illustration
- 16: Horus Rising (Novel) by Dan Abnett: Part Two, Chapter Seven, pg. 333
- 17: The First Expedition Forums, provided by Black Library Publishing editor Laurie Goulding.
- 18: Prospero Burns by Dan Abnett[Needs Citation]
- 19: Fulgrim (Novel) Chapter 14
- 20: Vengeful Spirit (Novel)
- 21: Death and Defiance (Anthology) - Imperfect
- 22: Talon of Horus (Novel) Chapter 19
- 23: Pharos (Novel) Chapter 24
- 24: Praetorian of Dorn (Novel) - Epilogue
- 25: Emperor of Mankind (Novel) - Ch 7
Related Articles
Loyalists | Traitors |
Lion El'Jonson •
Jaghatai Khan •
Leman Russ • |
Fulgrim •
Perturabo •
Konrad Curze • |