On the finding of the Primarchs
By author Perfidious Albion
In the year 663 of the 30th millennium, after the abduction of the infant Primarchs by mysterious foes without with the aid of a treacherous foe within, the Emperor of Mankind created twenty-six Space Marine Legions with the genetic material he had of them, left behind. Each of the Primarchs—the Emperor's thirteen sons and thirteen daughters—had a Legion created from their genes. All, save for Ozymandias Solarian and the Thunder Warriors, were sundered from their genetic children, but then reunited when they were rediscovered by the Emperor.
The Emperor found his lost children as his armies spread across the galaxy, racing to put Man's old empire back together, or as much of it as he could in time—desperate to let the Imperium grow strong enough, fast enough to stand a chance to survive the inevitable blow, when the green torrential wave of the Orks of Ullanor came crashing down upon mankind.
Here, in brief, is how he found them.
ZEROTH:
Ozymandias Solarian, the First Primarch, was not found, for he was not lost at all. He alone was never sundered from his father. His homeworld is Terra. Since his life began in 663.M30, from a very young age he fought in the Unification Wars of 354-669.M30, completing the conquest of Terra, alongside the Thunder Warriors. He led the betrayal and purge against the Thunder Warriors, whose malfunctioning bodies—too hastily designed—were failing, leading to exotic cancers and bouts of psychotic rage. Yet he never forgot them. He named his Legion the Thunder Warriors in their honour.
The Thunder Warriors are shock troops who burst through the foe with shock and awe. Like their gene-sire, they are straightforward, relentless, stoic, dutiful, and prone to solving all problems with overwhelming force. They stand 300,000 strong. Lord Solarian's flagship is the Gloriana-class battleship Scion of Sol, and he stands 2.76m tall—a craggy, beak-nosed bald figure only a head taller than his Astartes.
FIRST:
Derwyn, the Twentieth Primarch, was the first to be found off Terra, in 676.M30 upon the windswept mountainous world of Caledonia. The Caledonia system lies a mere few hundred light-years from the Sol system, and in ancient times was part of the 'Solar Ring' of fortress star-systems that guarded the Throneworld.
He gave his Legion their first name, the Black Watch, and rebuilt them from the ruins of Vimy into a two-faced force: to the galaxy, un-glamorous construction and combat engineers; to those few in the know, the Emperor's secret agents, cleansing the galaxy of Abominable Intelligences and other forbidden technologies that should have been forgotten. They stand 75,000 strong. Lord Derwyn's flagship is the Gloriana-class battleship Dreadnought, and he stands 2.72m tall—one of the shortest Primarchs, not much taller than his Space Marines. Nearly all of them share his queer crimson-and-emerald hair, and he blends in with them as they go about their secret tasks.
SECOND:
Nyx, the Nineteenth Primarch, was second-found by the Emperor, in 679.M30 upon the poisoned world of Calianthe V, in a star-system five-hundred light-years from Sol that suffered millennia of cruel, tyrannical xenos slavery. She despises xenos with absolute certitude, and equally unshakeable is her loyalty to the Emperor: "Until the stars themselves die."
She gave her Legion their first name, the Black Nineteenth, and taught them the ways of stealth, approach unseen and silent killing that she learnt when fighting her war: a revolt of scarcely armed slaves against the technologically superior Va-tha-thu on Calianthe V. They stand 150,000 strong. Lady Nyx's flagship is the Gloriana-class battleship Emperor's Hammer, and she stands 3.47m tall—a tiny bit under the average height for a Primarch, but hugely broad-shouldered and bulging with muscle. She is the Emperor's silent instrument of death, a black-mantled assassin and executioner.
THIRD:
Aurora Starchild, the Tenth Primarch, was third-found, in 691.M30, upon the Warp-tormented, radioactive, frozen hell-world of Sheol IX—right at the mouth of hell, for the Sheol system lies on the doorstep of the Eye of Terror. That is far from the Sol system, but the Emperor directed the young Imperium's expansion north-northwest, straight towards that gaping wound in reality, during the Imperium's earliest decades, for reasons known by few and told by none of them. Aurora, alone of the scattered Primarchs, knelt to the Emperor and recognised him as father and lord the very moment she saw him, with not the tiniest hesitation or doubt. Fearless, leading from the front, ever found in the thickest of battle, fierce in the fray yet polite and humble and friendly, swift with a smile and swift with a sword, totally in agreement with Imperial Truth ideals, and a true believer in the Emperor's dream, people call her the Emperor's golden daughter.
She renamed her Legion from the Hammers of the Emperor to the Bringers of Light. She led them to be a ferociously aggressive, combined-arms, offensive-obsessed force, subduing worlds with a sudden barrage of fast-paced heavy blows that never allow the reeling foe to regain the initiative. They stand 280,000 strong. Lady Aurora's flagship is the Gloriana-class battleship Emperor's Light, and she stands 4.16m tall—a tall slender figure crowned in a mane of golden-blonde, and impossibly beautiful, like a goddess of an ancient artist's imagination brought to life.
FOURTH:
Brantorrh Nghuirleth, the Fourteenth Primarch, met the Emperor in 694.M30. In 693.M30, the Imperium found his homeworld—the Warp-wracked planet of Morokh, also near the Eye of Terror—and he fought alongside his followers against the Imperium for a year. Many of the Morokhae deviated a long way from the human genome, twisted by the raging power of the Warp. Indeed Nghuirleth's body had been twisted by the Warp himself. The Empyrean's mutating touch marked him with two great horns growing out of his skull, giving the Stagcrowned his name. The struggle between the Morokhae and the Imperium ended when the Emperor came. An uneasy compromise was struck between the golden lord of mankind and his son, and Lord Nghuirleth joined in the cause of the Great Crusade.
He renamed his Legion from the Shadowed Walkers to the Crowned Hunters, and he made them specialists in ambush and frenzied, furious up-close assault. They stand 120,000 strong. Lord Nghuirleth's flagship is the Gloriana-class battleship Brimheorot, and he stands 4.27m tall—and that is not counting his horns. Almost the tallest and by far the largest of the Primarchs—greatly out-massing tall, lanky brothers and sisters—the Stagcrowned is a huge, hairy, horned, broad-shouldered, bushy-bearded brute.
FIFTH:
Karmella Moros, the Seventh Primarch, was reunited with her father in 699.M30, upon the shadowy world of Caligo, a place of shadow-cast valleys and dark woods haunted by monsters, in the galactic northwest. She is the third of three Primarchs whose lifepods were cast by the Chaos Gods near the Eye of Terror. She slew many of the monsters of her homeworld and imposed rigid law and order on that chaotic place—an ideal she fanatically upholds for the galaxy as a whole.
She renamed her Legion from the Emperor's Furies to the Dread Wardens and transformed them from a force that crushed and cowed rebellion with spectacular brutality to something of a policing unit dedicated to her strict vision of justice. They stand 180,000 strong. Lady Moros's flagship is the Gloriana-class battleship Tenebrosity, and she stands 4.04m tall—a pale, towering figure of dark armour and silver-white hair, who exudes dread and awe in equal measure.
SIXTH:
The Eighteenth Primarch, of name unknown to nigh all men, was tracked down by the Emperor in 707.M30. Prior to that, he had been operating a criminal empire inside the Imperium—having landed, and started up that empire, in a smaller interstellar empire that had been brought to Compliance some time ago. The Eighteenth Primarch did not wish to be a general, hero or warrior. He resented the change his father brought to his life. His homeworld is as unknown as his name.
He never renamed his Legion. That which remained, conventionally, in the Emperor's service is known, these days, as the Abandoned Eighteenth. The other part of his Legion—the shadowy part, the secret part, the only part their gene-father truly favoured—is known by very few to exist. Some of those few call it the Shadow Legion. The Abandoned Eighteenth stand 80,000 strong. The Shadow Legion's military strength is none. It does not practise warfare, preferring to operate in the Imperium's criminal underworld, surveying it, curtailing it and forcing it to remain within acceptable parameters. The nameless Eighteenth Primarch's flagship is the Gloriana-class battleship Consequences, and he stands 2.63m tall—one of the very shortest Primarchs, scarcely taller than a Space Marine, enabling him to blend in with his Astartes sons among crimelords' crudely genehanced thugs and hired brutes.
SEVENTH:
Hanna bar Arcmit, the Fourth Primarch, was found in 721.M30—and not, first, by the Emperor. Her first contact with the Imperium was with Explorator Fleet Octa-Kappa-52QC, a fleet of the Mechanicum that accidentally discovered a Primarch while exploring on a different mission. Before then, bar Arcmit cut her teeth in the cutthroat scheming of the Houses of Desolation, an adamantium-rich world in the galactic core, afflicted by cunning treachery, manipulation, greed for amassing scarce resources, and deceit. She learnt everything they knew.
She renamed her Legion from the Vaunted Falcons to the Adamantium Coalescence: a Legion as adept in diplomacy, manipulation and cold-blooded cutthroat scheming as they are at war. They stand 140,000 strong. Lady bar Arcmit's flagship is the Gloriana-class battleship Oasis, and she stands 2.67m tall—almost small enough to disappear among her Space Marines.
EIGHTH:
Urgrond, the Eighth Primarch, met the Emperor in 735.M30, upon the Ocean World of Kalanguld that was his home in the western Scutum-Centaurus Arm. A careful, precise, meticulous administrator, Lord Urgrond turned his underwater habitat, Tzeelaub, into a well-ordered machine. He then used it to conquer the other habitats when they attacked him and united the planet under his banner. To the Half-Drowned, reunion with the Emperor simply scaled up the size of the challenge. War is, like all things, a problem to be solved by cold calculation, to find the most efficient solution heedless of any other concerns.
He renamed his Legion from the Salt Warriors to the Trenchwalkers. He made them patient fighters backed by superb logistics who slowly, progressively grind their enemies into dust with pressure that is calm, steady, ceaseless and relentless. They stand 300,000 strong. Lord Urgrond's flagship is the Gloriana-class battleship Eosphorean, and he stands 3.66m tall—somewhat taller than the Primarchical average, though not exceptionally so. Some would say he is the ugliest Primarch. Whether caused by his passage through the ever-mutating Warp or the time when his lifepod crashed in the deepest trench of Kalanguld and he nearly drowned to death, the Form-Lord has bulging glassy eyes, pointed teeth, and dark grey leathery skin. He looks more like a grotesque sea creature than one of the Emperor's divinely beautiful children.
NINTH:
Who knows when Méduse d'Hiver, the Thirteenth Primarch, was found? Not the galaxy. The year of her rediscovery is forgotten, like so much else about her. The erasure of the lost XIII Legion from Imperial history has been terrifyingly thorough and precise. Few men and women know even that Méduse d'Hiver ever existed, let alone the dates of significance of her life and her story. Her homeworld, Joyaublanc, was said to be beautiful. It has been erased from all records. Only memories of those few souls who can recall speaking with a Joyaublancaise still tell that it existed once.
She renamed her Legion from the Stormdaughters to the Ice Queens. And she transformed them from a Legion like any other of the Emperor's loyal Space Marine Legions to something else. Something different, something strange, something secret, something few can say or know. Nowadays they are not called the Ice Queens. They are called the Lost Legion. For they disappeared, and almost no-one knows what became of them. What did they do? Why did the Imperium need to erase them from history? Few say, and fewer know. Their strength is unknown. Knowledge of the Lady of Winter's flagship, if she had one, is lost to history. Precious few recall that she stands or stood 3.95m tall—a hauntingly beautiful figure who towered over most of her fellow Primarchs. It is said her violet eyes could leave a man transfixed at a glance, trembling, unable to move.
TENTH:
Amihan Chainbreaker, the Twenty-Third Primarch, met her father again in 768.M30—more than thirty years after Urgrond, the last Primarch to be recorded rediscovered. Her homeworld Merdeka in the western Norma Arm, near the galactic core, was a Paradise World, at least until the coming of the Aurigans, a kingdom of cruel and feudal oppressors. Lady Chainbreaker led the resistance. She had defeated Auriga and ruled a small interstellar empire of subdued or liberated star-systems by the time the Emperor found her.
She gave her Legion their first name, the Chainbreakers. Truth be told, she transformed them little. Even before their reunion with their gene-mother, the XXIII Legion had come to specialise in a similar direction: guerrillas, revolutionary seditionists, saboteurs and subversives who tore apart societies from within. Where other Legions destroyed star nations that dared to fight against the Emperor's vision of a united human species with bolter and blade, the XXIII made the non-Compliant turn against themselves and each other. This was an excellent fit for Amihan Chainbreaker. They stand 200,000 strong. Lady Chainbreaker's flagship is the Gloriana-class battleship Liberty, and she stands 3.50m tall in her 'default' form—if such a thing can be said to have any meaning for a shapeshifter who can change to appear as anything she pleases.
ELEVENTH:
Anastasia Sophia Victoria, the Second Primarch, joined the Imperium in 773.M30, when the Emperor came to the Elysian State, a small but highly industrialised, militarised and expansionist empire of a dozen inhabited star-systems in the western Norma Arm that Lady Victoria ruled. The origins of the Elysian State lay in the Elysium system, home to two inhabited celestial bodies, a rocky planet Elysium III and a moon of a gas giant planet Elysium IV-B. Victoria had landed on Elysium IV-B, risen to military dictator of her home nation of Sordland, united the moon in bloody war, conquered Elysium III in an even bloodier war that killed over a billion people (a quarter of the planet's whole), and proceeded to wage fierce wars of expansion across the cosmos. When the Emperor arrived, she submitted readily enough, albeit with insistence on maintaining her power and privileges. She is admired by many, seen as fierce, proficient, courteous, strong and well-spoken. But in the privacy of her thoughts she is tormented by her hidden regrets and doubts.
She renamed her Legion from the Steel Maidens to the Silver Gryphons. She made them a fast-paced, aggressive, combined-arms force, to crush her enemies from afar with heavy firepower and big guns in quick campaigns. They stand 150,000 strong. Lady Victoria's flagship is the Gloriana-class battleship Hammer of Justice, and she stands 3.93m tall—a statuesque beauty, gleaming in heavily decorated silver armour.
TWELFTH:
Cyrus Jonahn, the Ninth Primarch, was found by the Emperor in 785.M30, after a tumultuous youth on not one, not two but three homeworlds: desolate, rust-covered Tuile, dark and frozen Frostedge and oceanic Kahurangi Nui. These three planets in the same star-system—the Cornucopia system in the galactic core—each faced various challenges which Lord Jonahn overcame with his technical genius, force of personality and military skill. Unusually for a Primarch, he was more an itinerant purveyor of humanitarian aid than a war-leader, unifier and conqueror. The Emperor observed his son quietly for a time. The master of mankind only unveiled himself when Jonahn was struggling to fix a cityship's esoteric engine core. The Emperor solved the problem, applying his superhuman intellect and millennia of ancient technological knowledge, and won Jonahn to his service.
He renamed his Legion from the Bloodied Fists to the Rust Spiders. Jonahn dealt with a Legion that had a reputation for supply troubles, lack of equipment and even theft and turned them into a proud Legion, expert in slow steady infantry advances and wild technological innovations built from repurposing scrap, and known for their kindness and humility. They stand 100,000 strong. Lord Jonahn's flagship is the Gloriana-class battleship Striding Scorpion, and he stands 2.55m tall—the shortest Primarch, small and round-faced and boyish-looking by appearance, though in truth he is the same age as all and any of his siblings.
THIRTEENTH:
Yvaine Sybilla, the Eleventh Primarch, met first not with the Emperor but with Ozymandias Solarian, the First Primarch, who rescued her from a monstrous daemonic beast of Khorne on the misty, forested Feudal World of Bretonnia in the galactic southwest in 795.M30. It was a time of great change for Sybilla; only the previous year had she come to see and explore Bretonnia, though it was her homeworld. Lady Sybilla spent more than a century under the loving yet smothering rule of her adoptive mother, the Aeldari witch Lileath. Lileath kept Sybilla as a princess in a castle, luxurious but caged, and argued to her that the outside world was so dangerous that she must not dare go outside the walls. In the end, the outside world found them. Lileath was slain by marauders, and Sybilla went out. This rescue earned Lord Solarian the eternal gratitude of Lady Sybilla. She has far more loyalty to him than to their busy, distant father.
She did not change her Legion's name, which was and would remain the Sororitas Psykana. She did, however, enforce her beliefs upon its practices. Sybilla is a psyker of great power and prefers to access and channel the raw energies of the Warp—psykery—than to strike bargains with the mysterious entities that dwell within—sorcery. She has firmly impressed this upon her daughters. They stand 70,000 strong. Lady Sybilla's flagship is the Gloriana-class battleship Errant Questor, and she stands 2.58m tall—small, slight and delicate by the standards of Primarchs, though still an immense figure to most humans.
FOURTEENTH:
Reina Vont, the Twenty-Fifth Primarch, encountered her sundered father the Emperor again in 804.M30, when the Emperor's immense golden starship landed on Ravenstahl. Once a Paradise World in the galactic north by the name of Eleria, Lady Vont transformed it into a polluted industrial hellscape of smoke-belching manufactora and stinking waste dumps through a mixture of malice, uncaring and laziness. She has carried those habits out into the stars.
She renamed her Legion from the Carrion Fangs to the Steel Crows. Once a Legion poor in public regard, used for cleaning up the remnants of battles won by other Legions and with an unsavoury reputation for taking out their frustration on the people of the planets they brought into Compliance, Vont transformed them into frontline fighters who brought many more worlds into the Imperium. This was done by enlisting huge numbers of genetically unmodified humans into her armies, mostly criminals and the scum of the galaxy whom nobody wanted, whilst also indulging in corruption, the evocation of treachery, poisoning worlds so badly that it ruins them for generations to come, and wanton brutality. They stand 180,000 strong. Lady Vont's flagship is the Gloriana-class battleship Frozen Spite, and she stands 3.35m tall—a little under average for a Primarch, pallid, stocky and muscular.
FIFTEENTH:
Libertania, the Sixteenth Primarch, met with her father in 810.M30 upon the Hive World of Agedo, south of the galactic core. Once one of the tough, hard-bitten mercenaries who fought in the endless wars between Agedo's hive cities contending for dominance, Lady Libertania developed a steadily accumulating hatred of the aristocrats whom she and her comrades fought for. Eventually she decided they were all tyrants as bad as each other. By the time the Emperor arrived, most of Agedo was under the rule of council governments set up by the roving bands of mercenaries who followed and adored Lady Libertania. This had mixed results—she was a much better warrior and revolutionary than she was a governor or stateswoman.
She did not rename her Legion; they were, and would remain, the Crimson Guard. She led them to become a highly aerospacecraft-focused Legion with a hardline anti-aristocratic streak—rejecting peaceful Compliances with planets that most Legions would have let join the Imperium without a fight, if those planets had any nobility in their government, and even refusing the concept of military ranks, preferring to address all of the Legion as "Sister". They stand 150,000 strong. Lady Libertania's flagship is the Gloriana-class battleship Wrathful Eagle, and she stands 3.44m tall—a little shorter than the Primarchical average, thick-set and squat.
SIXTEENTH:
Memnon of Androphagia, the Third Primarch, was rediscovered by the Emperor not long later, in 816.M30. The Bronze Primarch had landed in a culturally homogeneous sector known as the Helladic Cluster in the distant galactic northeast. Over years of war, he had united it under his rule. Unlike several other Primarchs of the empire-building sort, Lord Memnon had not attempted to unite mankind. He had been content to rule his cluster and that alone. The rest of the galaxy's business was not his business and was not of great interest to him, a Helladic provincialist fiercely proud of his home's separate culture, language, history and religion.
He renamed his Legion from the Thunderers to the Bronze Shields. He made them a cautious Legion, pinning his enemies between two fires and smashing them with plenty of firepower and with pinpoint Astartes strike-forces launching attacks in close combat on key positions to cripple the enemy. They stand 250,000 strong. Lord Memnon's flagship is the Gloriana-class battleship Lady Penelope, and he stands 3.50m tall—average height for a Primarch, black-haired, silver-eyed, bronze-skinned, of heroic build and classically handsome.
SEVENTEENTH:
Irene Hollander, the Twelfth Primarch, met the Emperor soon after Memnon did, upon the wealthy Civilised World of Opportune IV. Her rediscovery was in the year 819.M30. By then she had overthrown the Guildmasters who ruled the Marrus Sector, her home in the Far 3kiloparsec Arm, and established a new state in their place, emphasising absolute free-market principles.
She renamed her Legion from the Goldhands to the Galleon Daughters. She transformed the XII Legion into a curious but functioning collective of Great Companies, where each Great Company was almost like a Legion within a Legion, with very different tactics and emphases to the other Great Companies. They stand 300,000 strong. Lady Hollander's flagship is the Gloriana-class battleship Horatius's Hammer, and she stands 3.99m tall—tall even by Primarchical standards, dirty-blonde and approachably beautiful. Beneath her friendly smile, Lady Hollander too worries about the state of the Imperium and whether it is too close to the tyrannies she has always fought against.
EIGHTEENTH:
Antares Echo Bornwhole, the Twenty-Second Primarch, had his reunion with the Emperor of Mankind in 826.M30 on the world of Dawnline, a tide-locked desert planet in a star-system that was also home to seven other inhabited planets and numerous void habitats. The Tetrarch system in the far-off galactic east is one of the most densely populated star-systems in the known galaxy. It was not a joyous reunion. Lord Bornwhole is not called the Maimed Lord without cause. Much of his body has been replaced with augmetics, because in his childhood he was mutilated, captured and tortured by the Veiled Empire. This was a tyranny in his home star-system, the Tetrarch system, ruled by a powerful and arrogant psyker-overlord known only as the Witch-Queen. Lord Bornwhole led an alliance that eventually overthrew the Veiled Empire and he slew the Witch-Queen with his own hand. When the Imperium came, an empire led by an even more powerful psyker-overlord, Bornwhole saw in his father much similarity to his enemies of old. He bent the knee nonetheless, but only to preserve his people from the Imperial retaliation that he knew would come if they went against the Imperium.
He renamed his Legion from the Storm Crows to the Eclipse Rangers, and made them a Legion of void-ground-integrated warfare, swift strikes and strategic deception. They stand 80,000 strong. Lord Bornwhole's flagship is the Gloriana-class battleship Alert, and he stands 2.91m tall—shorter than most of his brothers and sisters, but taller by far than even a Space Marine; a great slab of a man, built with whirring machinery.
NINETEENTH:
Jiun Xiao, the Seventeenth Primarch, was rediscovered by the Emperor in 832.M30 upon the continental world of Xiuttilang. This planet in the remotest southeastern end of the galactic core was once home to tribes of fierce barbarian raiders and various settled civilisations. Xiao took over the barbarians and unleashed a bloody rampage of carnage, devastating and subjugating the settled civilisations. She was ruling as a bloody-handed raider-queen when the Emperor found her.
She renamed her Legion from the Death Riders to the Scourge, and she remade them in her image, casting aside their once stoic honour and decency and leading them to be callous, cruel, joyous barbarians who delight in the horrors they inflict upon the galaxy. They stand 220,000 strong. Lady Xiao's flagship is the Gloriana-class battleship Heavenfall, and she stands 4.02m tall—a lean figure taller than all but two of her sisters, a woman of sharp and striking features, with a long scar down her face.
TWENTIETH:
Haqqan the Red, the Twenty-First Primarch, met with the Emperor in 837.M30, when his fleet of pirate vessels saw a great golden starship and—naturally—he was plotting to steal her. The starship, the Emperor's own Bucephelus, spotted and contacted him first. A monstrous, sadistic psyker-pirate, Haqqan was a cannibal living in the Cradle of Set, a great Space Hulk in the Adaran Nebula which is the closest thing he has to a homeworld, preying on monsters and people alike, until he stowed away on a starship as she went out. Then he was a pirate, soon a pirate captain, in the service of the Good Masters of the Fortress of Apophis in the Adaran Nebula. He became so infamous for his brutality, power and cruelty that even his masters betrayed him. They failed to kill him, however, and so the Void-Witch survived to torment the galaxy.
He renamed his Legion from the Stellar Vanguard to the Scarlet Wave. He transformed them from a virtuous, upstanding Legion to a nest of giggling sadists, callous slavemasters, pirates, and cannibals. They stand 75,000 strong. Lord Haqqan's flagship is the Gloriana-class battleship Bosom of Tiamat, and he stands 4.29m tall—a corpse-pale slim figure and the tallest of all the Primarchs.
TWENTY-FIRST:
Yoorlungkura, the Twenty-Fourth Primarch, was cornered by the Emperor in 849.M30 upon the world of Mura-Mura in the far galactic southwest after a long chase. What his true homeworld is, few know. Yoorlungkura was unwilling to join the Imperium, a cause which he despised. The Emperor tracked him down for years and brought him in by force.
He never renamed his Legion. They were and would remain the Abyssal Shades. He did, however, change them, perhaps more dramatically than almost any other Legion. From a Legion that supported the Emperor's vision of the galaxy, Yoorlungkura shifted many of them to follow his own, almost polar-opposite vision: xenophilic where the Emperor is intent on the supremacy of the human species, spiritualist where the Emperor is atheistic, and keenly interested in the mysteries of the Warp. The Emperor's warnings of its dangers, he casts aside as ignorant and dogmatic. They stand 190,000 strong. Lord Yoorlungkura's flagship is the Gloriana-class battleship Silent Song, and he stands 4.10m tall—a lanky, lean, remote figure.
TWENTY-SECOND:
Ivan Zelezhonov, the Sixth Primarch, was found by the Emperor on the planet Arstotzka, a cold and forested world in the extreme galactic north, northeast of the Eye of Terror. Lord Zelezhonov ruled a budding interstellar empire by the time of 854.M30 when the Emperor found him. The Iron Primarch had united Arstotzka, deposing its Chaos-corrupted former king and the 'witches' that backed him, and conquered several surrounding planets, installing a devoutly religious, conservative regime with himself as Vozhd. This experience gave Zelezhonov a passionate lifelong hatred of psykers and aristocrats.
He renamed his Legion from the Lightning Warriors to the Red Cossacks, and he remade them from fierce but excessively brutal and ill-disciplined shock troops, yet loyal to the Emperor and the Imperial Truth, to a rigid, iron-discipline force that overcomes worlds with massive barrages of artillery and firepower and is fanatically religious, contrary to the Emperor's decrees. They stand 250,000 strong. Lord Zelezhonov's flagship is the Gloriana-class battleship Kalashnikov, and he stands 3.03m tall—short for a Primarch, stocky, brown of eye and brown of hair, and wearing a moustache.
TWENTY-THIRD:
Oiwa Izanami, the Fifteenth Primarch, was found by the Emperor in 861.M30 upon the miserable, wintry world of Yomi located in the infamous Ghoul Stars. She reigned over Yomi as a witch-queen, having deposed and destroyed the planet's Last Empire and replaced it with a theocracy of the Mikoshi, a cult of Warp sorceresses who were feared and despised by the rest of the planet, even its other psyker cults, who saw them as corrupt and unrestrained with the Warp's power.
She renamed her Legion from the Imperial Blades to the Ghost Warriors, and she forced them through an utter transformation from proud warriors of psykery and sword into mysterious cultists who revere the dark powers available to the Warp and win worlds by psychic and psychological warfare, torment, sorcery and terror. They stand 85,000 strong. Lady Izanami's flagship is the Gloriana-class battleship Soratobu Yūreibune, and she stands 3.88m tall—a tall, spindly, cadaverous figure with spindly black hair and deathly pale, always wearing a mask of a grinning monster with horns and tusks.
TWENTY-FOURTH:
Magnar Tiber, the Twenty-Sixth Primarch, was reunited with the Emperor his father not in calm consultation or even tense negotiation but in the frenzy of battle in 862.M30. He had landed on Helestine, a Civilised World that survived the ravages of the Age of Strife unusually well. Independently from the Emperor he had come to the same conclusion as his father on the necessity of uniting mankind against outside threats; and he had built an interstellar empire by the time the Imperium encountered him. Tragically, this empire and the Imperium went to war, each seeking to unite the human species under its own banner, and not realising the family connection between their respective emperors. The Imperium won; Lord Tiber's empire lost; and Helestine's empire was broken up and absorbed into the greater Imperium. Tiber was a prisoner on Terra raging against his father for years before he finally submitted and agreed to join his father's cause.
He gave his Legion their first name, the Helestine Guard. To their relief he did not force them through a grand transformation that would break their ethos. He configured them as a flexible, generalist army with an emphasis on proper logistics, skill at administration and effective strategic command. They stand 270,000 strong. Lord Tiber's flagship is the Gloriana-class battleship Ambition, and he stands 4.21m tall—striking an impressive figure, tall, strong, well-built and classically handsome. Outwardly Lord Tiber is reconciled to the Imperium; but he still doubts the Emperor, and in his heart still burns the flame of ambition.
TWENTY-FIFTH:
Hernan de Leon, the Fifth Primarch, was the very last to be found by the Emperor, in the year 875.M30, more than two-hundred years after the Primarchs' scattering. Like Lord Tiber, Lord de Leon had built a large interstellar empire. Unlike Lord Tiber's, it was a harsh, uncompromising feudal regime of callous carelessness with the lives of its subjects. De Leon was influenced heavily by his homeworld, Naranjomundo, in the extreme galactic east at the far edges of mankind's dominion. When the Age of Strife struck, the terraforming of Naranjomundo was unfinished. There was no access to fresh water except via water-purifying machines, so the people who controlled those machines held absolute power over the rest of the population. Over centuries they turned into an absolutist, domineering aristocracy.
He renamed his Legion from the Lions of Sol to the Conquerors. He remade them in his own image as a Legion of prideful, lordly men who deem others their inferiors and will expend their lives without hesitation. The Conquerors are incredibly quickly conquering, bringing new planets into the Imperium at a faster rate than any other Legion, but a titanic, lamentable, unfathomable cost in blood. They stand 130,000 strong. Lord de Leon's flagship is the Gloriana-class battleship Claw of de Leon, and he stands 3.28m tall—a little shorter than the average Primarch, yet looking more like the Emperor than any of his brothers do, except for the lack of the glowing golden eyes. Though de Leon at first seemed promising—a scientist-king, engineer, innovator and ruler of a great empire, who shares the Emperor's passion for uniting mankind—he has soon gained a dark reputation as a haughty, callous overlord who treats his inferiors as if their lives matter not at all.
THESE are the Legiones Astartes. Virtuous or vicious, defensive or aggressive, kind or cruel, loyal to Emperor and Imperium or doubting them, fond of the Warp and its mysteries or despising it and all its works, these are the deadly instruments with which the Emperor forces the galaxy to bend to his will.
When faced with the barbarous rampages of the Greenskin hordes of the Ullanor Orks and the soulless cruelty and terrible high technologies of the Rangdan Cerebravores, will they be enough?
A/N: There are maps of the galaxy I've made, showing the expanding young Imperium and the places of these many worlds; but won't let me post images. Galactic maps can be found on IMGBB, an image-hosting website. See imgbb dt cm, slsh y5PJ9cs and jM6Yyk3.