The Two Missing Primarchs
Welcome back, lore-lovers, to Liandrug -- the place where the forgotten echoes of the Imperium whisper their truths. Today, we plunge into one of Warhammer 40k's deepest enigmas: the tale of the Lost Primarchs. Two sons erased from records. Two legends buried beneath millennia of secrecy. Who were they? What happened? And why has the Imperium tried so hard to make us forget?
The Chronicle
In the dark vaults of Imperial history, there are two silences louder than war drums--the Second and Eleventh Legions. Known only as "the forgotten and the purged," they have been stricken from memory, erased by order of the highest powers in the Imperium through an Edict of Obliteration--Damnatio Memoriae. This decree, in High Gothic, is a formal condemnation of memory itself, a method of annihilation reserved for those deemed Excommunicate Traitoris. Names, symbols, monuments--everything must vanish. And so, the II and XI were deleted from Imperial records with such thoroughness that even among legends, they are little more than echoes.
Yet, fragments remain.
In the 41st Millennium, a curious entry slipped into copies of the Astra Militarum's Uplifting Primer hinted at an ancient truth--the II and XI Legions once fought during the Rangdan Xenocides, great purging wars of the Great Crusade. The records offer no detail, just a name and a shadow of involvement in that brutal conflict.
During the Great Crusade, atop the waterfalls of the Kath Mandau Precinct on Terra, Rogal Dorn passed beneath statues honoring each of his brothers. Two plinths stood empty. "No one ever spoke of those two absent brothers," he reflected. "Had their tragedies been warnings left unheeded?"
Their absence is more than physical. In A Thousand Sons, at the Triumph of Ullanor, Magnus the Red mentions how rare it is for nine primarchs to gather. Mortarion cuts him off, reminding him that they are forbidden to speak of the others. The edict was clear--even among brothers, silence was law.
The First Heretic gives more weight to the timeline. The Lost Legions were already purged at least four decades before the Drop Site Massacre. During the censure of Lorgar and his Word Bearers at Monarchia, only eighteen Legions are referenced. In a moment of dread, Lorgar confides in Magnus: "We would be cast alongside the brothers we no longer speak of."
Among the Legiones Astartes, rumors stirred. Around the time of the erasure, the Ultramarines swelled in size, eclipsing all others. Whispers suggested the ranks of the forgotten were quietly folded into Guilliman's Legion. Whether true or not, it does not explain the fate of their primarchs.
In shadowed conversations between the Word Bearers, truths were danced around. "The Eleventh Legion is expunged for good reason," one muttered. "As is the Second." Speculation rose--if a single sword thrust into a primarch's pod could prevent shame, would it be done? Others wondered if their silence had only fueled the rise of the Thirteenth.
But their names are gone. Their statues removed. Their stories, if any remain, are locked behind seals no one dares break. Only silence, and the hollow spaces they left behind, whisper of the Lost.
In the labyrinthine dark beneath the earth, Ferrus Manus wandered alone. In Feat of Iron, the Primarch of the Iron Hands came upon a hidden chamber, lost to time. There, in solemn silence, stood twenty statues--each masked, yet unmistakably familiar. He knew their forms, their stance, their presence... all but two. The faces of these two were shattered, their masks broken and defaced, as if time itself sought to forget them.
On another battlefield, in Fear to Tread, the burden of secrets weighed heavy on Sanguinius. Horus saw the Angel slay one of his own--driven mad by a flaw that clawed at the soul of the Blood Angels. Sanguinius, anguished, confessed he had hidden the truth of the Red Thirst from all, even from the Emperor. When Horus pressed him, asking why he wouldn't seek their father's aid, the angelic Primarch's reply was laced with fury. He would not let his sons vanish into history, not suffer the fate of a third lost name beneath the Hegemon's vaulted halls.
Long before the Great Crusade reached its crescendo, in Descent of Angels, a young Zahariel listened intently as Brother Israfael spoke of the galaxy and its histories. In that moment, the Lion was still one of twenty brothers. The records still remembered the Lost, their erasure yet to be complete.
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Hints of what befell them echo in Legion. A warning delivered in quiet conversation: there had been precedents. Legions had faltered before. Chayne, speaking to Lord General Namatjira, urged caution, recalling that even Astartes were not beyond censure or dissolution.
And in Prospero Burns, as Magnus's fate neared its fall, Russ was asked whether he feared brother fighting brother. His answer was grave, and spoken with the weight of memory. It was not unprecedented. His Wolves had been loosed once before.
Kasper Hawser, observing the Imperium's might, spoke of the fortress-homes of the eighteen Legions--each a bastion of strength. The number said more than words. The missing two were already gone, their existence reduced to silence long before the Heresy consumed the galaxy.
In The Outcast Dead, even the scholars of the mind saw the pattern. Gregoras, reflecting on Magnus's transgression, predicted that the Wolves would be unleashed again. The Emperor's chosen executioners, always kept near, for moments when brother might need to turn against brother.
Corax, in Deliverance Lost, remembered his first meeting with the Emperor. There was joy in learning he had siblings--seventeen others, the Emperor said. But Corax hesitated. He had always been the nineteenth. The Emperor's gaze darkened. "The other two." That was all He would say. The matter, too heavy for the present, was left for a day that would never come.
From this, it was clear: by the time Corax was found, the Lost were already gone. Their memory buried, their names erased. The tragedy had unfolded in the early days of the Great Crusade, before the dream of unity had fully bloomed.
Lastly, in Vulkan Lives, amidst the fire and blood of Kharaatan, the Salamanders' Primarch confided in his Equerry. Vulkan had seen the storm brewing in the hearts of his brothers--especially in Curze. Numeon urged him to speak to Horus or Dorn, but Vulkan refused. The weight of two erased brothers was grief enough. Another sanction... another empty pillar... was a wound he could not bear to see inflicted again.
In the depths of Macragge's fortress, within a chamber crafted to seat the Emperor and his twenty sons, Roboute Guilliman showed Lion El'Jonson a table draped in the seal of Terra. Twenty-one great chairs stood--each adorned with the heraldry of a Legion--save for two. Their pennants were blank, bleached, forgotten. When the Lion asked of them, Guilliman answered simply, "Their absence must be marked. That is simply honor."
Far from Macragge, Jaghatai Khan pondered the burden of empire. "Eighteen brothers," he mused. Not twenty. That number had long been silent.
In the void above Baal, twenty Blood Angels stood watch, awaiting word of their lost primarch. When the Knight-Errant Tylos Rubio arrived bearing a rare black scroll, it was said that such messages had only come twice before--to two other Legions whose names had since vanished. Their homeworlds must once have received those final decrees--perhaps marking their doom.
Within the Imperial Palace, deep beneath the golden towers, lay the remnants of the Emperor's first laboratory. Caleb, an agent of Malcador, saw etched into the sealed door the sigils of the Legions. Two had been erased. When he asked, Malcador only walked on.
Even the great cartography of war, etched in The Book of Betrayal, concealed their fate. Where the names of the Legions were written, II and XI bore only black bars--long enough to hint at once-great titles, now lost. Maps showed a site called The Finding of the Lost Son--perhaps Alpharius, or perhaps another.
Old chronicles speak of redacted events where the Space Wolves, the Emperor's executioners, took part. Perhaps these were the silent endings of those forgotten Legions. And yet, Magnus once spoke with Lorgar, hinting that the erasures came long before those events, as though they had always been ghosts in the archives.
Some say one failed in the earliest trials of gene-seed, noted in the hidden history of the Alpha Legion. Others whisper of a flawed experiment or a dark secret, buried in the Emperor's attempts to forge perfect warriors.
The Rangdan Xenocides, a cataclysmic war in the Eastern Fringe, devoured entire Legions. Records redact who was lost. Perhaps one Legion fell there, swallowed by a war that nearly shattered the Imperium.
An old Dreadnought of the XII Legion once said, "Twice before, the Emperor purged His sons... and every soul that followed them." A chilling echo of silence.
In the wake of Guilliman's resurrection, he reminded the priest Mathieu: "I was one of twenty. Two failed. Half the rest turned traitors." To the artificial mind of the Cawl Inferior, even centuries later, the gene-stock of those erased Legions remained. When Cawl proposed to revive them, Guilliman refused. "The primarchs were at fault," said the machine. "Not the gene-seed."
Even in stone, their absence endured. In a hall of statues, Rogal Dorn stared at two empty plinths. When Malcador once counted the loyal Legions, he sighed, "Would that it were fifteen..." Dorn answered quietly, "I know."
What had befallen them? An accident? A failure? Betrayal? The truth, like their names, remains erased. But the silence they left behind still echoes across the stars.
Closing Words
And so, the tale of the Lost Primarchs remains incomplete -- a silence louder than any scream. If this mystery stirred your curiosity, show some love by liking, sharing, and subscribing. And if you're hungry for more forbidden knowledge, join our Discord, where I'm trying to create a cozy haven where lore-lovers like you gather to unravel the secrets of the universe, one theory at a time.
Until next time, this is Liandrug -- signing off from the shadows of the dark future.
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