Tsons. You get superpowers at the cost of becoming the 40k equivalent of a super mutant. It was bad enough that the imperium was considering purging them.
I have always thought that the reason that the Tsons mutate is not because they have psychic powers, but because they use them so much and so reckless.
Like, we know psychic powers can cause mutation and the Tsons uses their powers a lot.
The impression that I got is that while restraint can hold it back and buy time, it doesn’t prevent the flesh change outright. The thousand sons would still get claimed by their curse even if they don’t overdo it with their powers.
The flesh change was still a looming threat for individuals within the legion that exercised greater levels of restraint, such as Revuel Arvida.
Edit: excerpt from *Path to Heaven* between Revuel Arvida (Thousand Sons sergeant) and Yesugei (White Scars chief stormseer)
> “Next to him was Arvida. The sorcerer's breathing was coarse. ‘If I ask you if all is well, my brother,' Yesugei said quietly, 'I believe I know what you will tell me.' Arvida did not reply. He seemed to be rocking very fractionally, as if steeling himself.
> ‘You will tell me yes, all is well,' Yesugei went on. ‘You are weary, that is all. And who of us is not weary?' Yesugei looked back out at the void. The great sphere now filled most of the view forward, and the edges of its constituent crystals were becoming visible. They were massive elongated octahedrons, regular in form and size, their facets perfectly angled and regular, as if cut by a las-beam. The spectral glow that coiled inside them was like the aether itself, ever-changing, writhing within a glassy prison.
> ‘Perhaps is easier if I tell you what I know,' Yesugei went on, his voice soft enough to keep the conversation between the two of them. ‘You are not a fool, but neither am I. **You learn to put control on it, but you cannot keep it fully hidden**. Your gene-father could not, so what hope you have? **There is no shame. You have done well to keep it secret, so dormant, but is running away from you now**.' Still Arvida did not respond. The rocking grew more intense.
> ‘**It is the warp, yes?**’ asked Yesugei. '**It is worse, when you use your art**. I encouraged you. If I caused you greater pain, then-'
> ‘You are not the cause.' The sorcerer's voice was hesitant. Somewhere behind his helm, his features must have been stiff with suppressed agony.
Yesugei placed his hand on Arvida's forearm.
> 'What can I do?' ‘Nothing.'
> Neither spoke for a while. The Stormbird flight neared the sphere's perimeter, the craft buffeted as the first forks of lightning shot around and under them. ‘Is it obvious?' asked Arvida at length.
'I do not think so. **You have been careful**.' Arvida nodded stiffly. '**It will be worse. In there**.' I know. You could have refused to go.'
> No, I wish to see it. These are the places where the warp was studied. Who knows?' Arvida sighed - a grating sound like filtering stones through a sieve. 'Chasing down diminishing hopes, grasping at the last of them as they gutter out. There are days when I think your Shiban is right. Force the battle. Get it over with.'
> At the mention of Shiban, Yesugei felt a brief twinge of pain. 'If moment comes,' he said. If you cannot control it...'
> ‘**I remain the master**.' Very well. Then I trust you.' -*Path to Heaven*
Even nonpsyker TS marines developed the gene flaw. (Yes, there were nonpsyker TS marines. These guys and the weaker psykers were who got turned into dust marine rubrics.) Only biomancy held the flaw in check, and not indefinitely.
There is an argument, perhaps valid, that the flesh change was not due wholly to gene flaw, though, but was instead due in part of in whole to Tzeentch.
You are partially correct. Some sources state that it’s the weaker psykers that were transformed intro rubricae, while others state that it targeted the sons of Magnus indiscriminately.
Considering the fact that a non-insignificant number of the Sekhmet, the elite veteran bodyguards of Magnus the Red, were transformed into rubricae as a result of the Rubric of Ahriman, I lean towards the ladder proposal more so than the former.
Vertical well could be that the flesh change targeted indiscriminately but the rubric hit the weakest 90% of the legion, then tzeentch eased off on the change when it had its prize.
I am fond of the idea that it's all part of tzeentchs plan and not just a happy coincidence
IIRC in the TSons novel it's mentioned that a Warp Storm erupted over Terra when the Big E was producing TSons geneseed, and he used it as a catalyst for its creation - which probably lead to major instabilities.
my headcanon is they were unlucky enough to both NOT set any kind of "filter" on their warp power usage (according to my another headcanon the warpfilters like imperial cult or power of fenris have the same power as waaagh psy-field - strong shared belief enables them to indeed filter out warp energies) AND having their power taken from the part of Sea of Souls directly controlled by Tzeenth instantly having him notice them and put an unwanted "blessing" upon them, and what could Tzeenth blessing be if not uncontrollable nonsystematic **change**
I think that if a filter would’ve provided ample protection against the curse of the flesh change, that we would’ve seen it with Revuel Arvida.
He was a sergeant whose position in the legion was held back due to taking greater precautions than most of the legion, who then had a long recovery process under the guidance and tutelage of the chief stormseer of the White Scars.
Was he working with the Stormseer before the Flesh Change or did the Stormseer aid the recovery? The way you wrote it made me think the Stormseer’s guidance may have encouraged the use of safety filters.
He was discovered by the White Scars in *Scars* when they went to Prospero to investigate what happened. Due to stress and malnourishment, Revuel Arvida left Prospero w/ them in weak condition and spent months recovering.
During his recovery process, he spent a great deal of time with the White Scars’ chief stormseer, who put a great deal of effort into retraining him with regard to how to use the warp.
He fell to the flesh change later in *Path to Heaven*, with the chief stormseer noticing the signs of it and blaming his encouragement for the flesh change taking greater hold over Arvida.
The Scars used the term “drinking deeply from the goblet of power” or something like that. They, the Sons and the Blood Angels were the Big 3 psykers and the Scars Librarians were more moderate in their use of the warp while the Thousand Sons were summoning Daemon Servants and shit
The flesh change was most widespread before the arrival of Magnus, during which time the legion was significantly less psyker focused. A huge amount of them were still psykers, but they didn’t use their powers nearly as much or draw on them as deeply
Warp exposure and usage do strengthen the curse of the flesh change (it does as well for the Wulfen and the Black Rage).
Even members of the thousand sons that are more cautious with their usage of the warp have an ongoing conflict to hold the flesh change back.
How are they viewed by other chapters?
IIRC, even the Black Dragons are shunned pretty well across the chapters and are/were on the inquisition's naughty but not quite heresy list because there's no actual mutation noted in their geneseed.
They bring a game of dungeons and dragons wherever they go too.
Even if you attribute the flesh change to a Tzeentch curse and not the geneseed itself, it still has to be theThousand Sons for the extremely high rejection rate and the universally hated space magic.
Except the Wolves were the oldest aspirants and they were still late teens and early twenties, most Legions selected their aspirants in the twelve to fifteen range.
Die for the Emperor or get snuffed by the Emperor - Not amazing options.
From the loyalist side, pretty sure the Blood Angels. It's gotten to a point that several BA chapters have to make strong efforts to contain their flaws, some less successful than others. Some stop caring and instead embrace their curses. Some of the most violent and vile chapters come from the BA line, such as the Flesh Tearers, the Flesh Eaters, the Angels Vermillion, the Knights of Blood, etc.
From the traitor side, the Thousand Sons for sure. Their gene-flaw literally turned them into Chaos spawns, mindless amorphous monsters that killed anything in sight and died gruesome deaths.
I was looking through this for the BA argument. Cause how terrible for sanguinius to have to kill his own sons. I realize others did too but I dont think anyone else does it out of mercy.
depends a bit
TS are bad but somewhat rare, was never fixed though, just pushed back
EC nearly wiped them out but was pretty much fixed
BA not as bad in the legion days but got worse and is rly fcking bad in 40k
SW bad but more a 40k thing
I think one could say that TS was fixed post-Heresy with the Rubric. "Fixed" being a relative term, as it also meant the ignoble Thanossnapification of 90% of the already depleted Legion, but *technically* the ones around during the present setting no longer have anything to fear from the Flesh Change.
They’re genetic code would rapidly degrade and they would die and this issue persisted untill Fulgrim was found. At the start of the great crusade there were only a few thousand emperors children when other legions had 10s to 100s of thousands.
They also got absolutely fucked by the wholesale destruction of one of their gene vaults being transported and the one on Luna got infected and fucked up too.
So someone attempted to completely wipe them out after they got decimated rescuing the emperor from an assassination attempt.
Gene seed got infected with some kind of blight that caused there numbers to drop to only 200.
If I remember correctly it's been hinted that it's warp related somehow.
>If I remember correctly it's been hinted that it's warp related somehow.
There's some suggestion of that in the Bile books, though it's not 100% clear if that's specific to his particular strain of the blight or the whole legion. I think it leans towards the latter.
With the blood angels the red thirst was actually worse in the days Pre Sanguinius back when they where called the Revenant Legion. Nassir Amit has some flashback scenes to those days and to when Sangiunius joined them in Echoes of Eternity. they other legions avoided working with the 9th back then even the War Hounds(later the world rate real had a better reputation than them. we also see this in the Sangiunius primarch novel. the only legal. that had a worse reputation in the early days was the night lords(see the Sigismund novel for that, even early one pre Konrad, the other legions held the 8th in contempt for the their tactics and actions).
the Primarchs have a psychic effect on their sons we see this a lot in the heresy and siege novels and also later with Guilliman and the Lion in 40k. when sangiunius first Mets his sons as shown in both echoes of eternity and his primarch novels he seems to calm them and his presence curbs their tendencies why also negating some of the effects of the red thirst, we also see this in fear to tread where he comes upon a son who has fallen to the red thirst while campaigning with the 16th(this is how horus alone of his brothers learned of I the red thirst) and the Blood angel briefly seems to snap out of his fugue. In 40k when Gilliland or the Lion have entered the battlefield their presence seems into act like a switch for their respective sons. who the normally staid Ultramarines and Dark Angels become bolder in the presence of their fathers. we even see TBE effect a traitor primarch can have on a son who fundamentally disagrees with him, when Loken encounters Horus after Istavaan in the novel vengeful spirit and even in the end and rhe Death part 3 there is a what seems to be a built In complusion for him to join his father and he struggles with it both times because he knows his father is wrong and Horus actions are unforgivable.
the Black rage gets called a gene flaw but its really the same as the Red thirst, the issues the EC and TS have of the curse of the Wulfen, its more a psychic wound that was embedded into the legion when Sangiunius was brutally killed by his brother. one that effects all his sons because they carry his genes and the wound latches on to that not something like the red thirst that pre what we have been seen was a flaw from the outset. e Sons of the blood are not even unique in carrying a psychic wound that physically effects them post heresy. The sons of Dorn can fall into something called Dorn's darkness where they enter a catatonic state reliving their Primarchs darkest moment, finding the Bodies of the Emperor and Sangiunius on the Vengeful spirit.
I only now hear of Dorn‘s Darkness and the Black Rage sounds like child‘s play in comparison. Do they also THINK they are dorn or are fully aware who they are?
No.
they go full catatonic, they do not think they are dorn, they just see it, over and over again and can't move. its different than the black rage where they think they are there and see sangiunius dead body and see everyone else as horus.
I would compare the black rage to a Viking berserker rage that cannot be stopped.
while I would compare dorns darkness to what happens to the young soldier in the novella and film Johnny got his gun. if you want a quick way to see what I am talking about watch the metallica official music video for their song "One".
dorns darkness is being trapped inside your own head unable to move and just seeing horrors over and over agajn.
both are terrifying but in my opinion Dorns darkness triggers a primal fear.
It only presents in the Excoriators chapter
One marine lost in The Darkness seems to experience Dorn's POV whilst still maintaining awareness of his own self:
>The dark nothingness about me saps my soul. Blood courses through my body. Battle beckons. I tremble not with dread but with expectation, the impending realisation of my genetic heritage. I am a warrior down to the last molecule of my being. I was engineered to kill for something greater than myself, to serve the Father-of-All with blade, bolt – even my last breath, and all those preceding.
>
>I live the lost brothers I have ended. Their bodies fallen and terrible in the murderous ruin they have committed – one upon the other and myself upon them all. Mighty brothers lie twisted and broken. Their god-flesh is still. Fratricide over. The chime of battle hangs about their corpses. Their weapons decorate the changing floor. My own joins them.
>
>A doom, so deep, has reached me. A pain so clear and a loss so searing to my existence that it shatters my soul. Like a dread nova, erupting through histories both galactic and personal, the Darkness finds me. For a moment, there is light in the nothingness. The Emperor of Mankind is with me – here, in this hopeless place. His presence and legacy a beacon in the blackness. Withering to look upon. Impossible not to. I approach as one might his doom. Hesitant. Uncomprehending. Child-like. The moment overwhelms me and tears cascade down my blood-flecked cheeks. Then like a nova – brief, beautiful and sad in its distant diminishing – the beacon fades. I fall to my knees and I weep uncontrollably, for there is nothing left to do. No higher power to whom I can appeal.
>
>The star has faded. The light is gone. In its place is dead space, laced with the poisonous shockwave of the aftermath, trembling through the ages. All that is left is the bottomless grief of the orphan Angel. **My hearts know his immortal sorrow. Rogal Dorn. My father’s loss. My loss through his. I feel what he felt, stood over the Emperor. I know the fear and misery he allowed himself. That moment of doubt and horror-stricken possibility becomes my eternity. It saturates me with its despair**. **I sink deep within myself and find a greater darkness there. An Imperium without an Emperor. A fatherless humanity. An eternity without direction. Dorn’s Darkness**.
*The Legion of the Damned*\- Sanders
>EC nearly wiped them out but was pretty much fixed
From what I understood basically the only one who's still alive with the original flaw is Fabius, and it still wrecks him.
I know a lot of you guys are pointing out the Flesh Change, Red Thirst, and wolf-boys. However, the World Eaters had the flaw that Angron was their dad.
From the author of The First Heretic:
>The First Heretic screams the very same thing. The importance Lorgar places on Kor Phaeron and Erebus. The ranks they hold in the Legion, from their humble beginnings, carried to the top by Lorgar. The way he speaks with them - Kor Phaeron especially - and the way they speak to him. The climactic moment he finally goes against their will. And so on. **There's no genetic mandate for the Legion to worship anything (that's an overly simplistic and inaccurate reading of it, but you see it passed around sometimes) and I'm not sure there's any real evidence for a predisposition for zealotry in the terms some folks say, but there is a brief mention made of the chemicals in their brains reacting a certain way to Lorgar. And even then, it's not made a big deal out of, or some breathtakingly huge change in their genetic make-up. Argel Tal even asks "Is our loyalty bred into our bones?" and the answer is a direct “No."**
ADB
The Horus Heresy Black Books paint it as more of a need for a cause than a need for Worship or Loyalty - that part comes from lorgar:
>"It might seem strange that warriors who had fought to cast down gods would embrace those same beliefs, but this ignores the basic nature of the fanatic. At their core they need a cause around which to build their world. What that cause is can be changed, so long as the heat of its fire fills them. In their hearts the XVIIth fell into the grasp of religion because part of them had always wanted to, part of them wanted there to be more to belief than rationality."
From Horus Heresy Book Two: Massacre
Genetic issues have also been strongly hinted at elsewhere:
>"The gene-seed of the Word Bearers was originally thought to be pure, but events subsequent to the Horus Heresy revealed the weaknesses inherent in their genetic make-up. The Space Marines of the Word Bearers have a marked tendency towards dogged, unquestioning belief and stubbornness that verges on insanity."
From Index Astartes: Word Bearers
>Sor Talgron hated the zealotry. He hated the metaphysical need that seemed gene-coded into his battle-brothers – there was a new and desperate hunger in the Legion to believe in something more than the struggle and pain and torment that was mortal existence."
From "The Purge" by Anthony Reynolds
Yeah, the Black Books are strongly biased/unreliable narrator. Sor Talgron qualifies it with "seemed". etc etc
What ADB is getting at here is that in-universe people blame the gene-seed, and there's even a nugget of possible truth in it being an influence, but that the legion still had willpower and freedom of choice. They weren't slaves to it
The same kind of zealots that all the loyalist legions became in the end? The Templars could give the OG Word Bearers a run for their money when it comes to their disregard for the imperial truth
Its the catalepsean node. The area of the brain that controls sleep and dreams also influences devotion and religious faith. They're cursed to worship whoever or whatever they follow
Probably the 2 expunged legions, Emps wasn't a superstitious guy so whatever was wrong with them must have been very serious to just completely delete them.
Other legions did some seriously heinous things so it has to be more than just something they did.
Each Primarch is a embodiment of a personality trait of Big E, so I like the idea the two expunged ones represented Peace or Tolerance or something like that. They gotta go!
Gun to my head that's genuinely what I'd go with. They were not just idealistic but genuinely nice.
That's why Malcy was so adamant about them not being mentioned either. It's just not supposed to be part of the program.
Could be other reason, like having a Legion/Primarch of blanks that were resistant to his supernatural charisma and proved too willing to question Jimmy Space.
Basically the 2nd and 11th legions don’t exist. All knowledge of them and their primarchs have been wiped from imperial record. As in Alpharius himself was unable to uncover information regarding them.
There’s a few examples of sentimentality where “the forgotten and the purged” are mentioned but never by name and even the primarchs while chastise their brothers for mentioning them.
There’s even a short story where rogal dorn and malcador get into a fight as he realizes malcador had removed the memories of these two primarchs from dorns head. Malcador decided to let dorn remember them and the situation……. Dorn ended up asking him to remove the memories again. *ROGAL DORN* of all people couldn’t handle the knowledge of whatever those two primarchs did.
So there are 20 primarchs. But there are actually only 18. But there’s actually 19.
Holy shit. When you take into account all the messed up stuff the imperium does one can only imagine how horrifically messed up those primarchs were. Is there any hint at all about what they did?
Nothing.
Basically the only thing we knows is that it probably happened during the rangdan xenocides during the great crusade. We also have plenty of suggestions that the space wolves were the ones to do the deed. Nothing confirmed but Alpharius was convinced that Russ had something to do with it.
We also know that around the time of these two primarchs being purged the ultramarines had a surge of new recruits and malcador all but admits to wiping these legions memories so as to not “waste” them.
My thing is that despite everything the traitors did during the horus heresy…….. knowledge of them still exists. Your average citizen doesn’t know but there higher ups in the imperium have access to that knowledge as I understand it. So if the Horus heresy isn’t enough to have all knowledge of you wiped out……. What did those two do?
[Some context](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/15t75j1/comment/jwidx51/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) on the Ultramarines stuff from the author of that in-universe gossip. The Ultramarines surging around the same time is pretty much character conflation. Correlation not causation.
And the likely reason that the nine aren't as deeply scrubbed as the two is probably for a couple of reasons:
1. The ability to do so died with Malcador
2. The nine traitor legions still exist, the Imperium is better off not totally forgetting who they are since they're still a present danger. II and XI don't seem to be.
> Malcador slowly moved back, out of the ornate sword's killing arc. 'The… loss of the Second and the Eleventh was such a wound upon us, and it threatened the ideals at the heart of the Great Crusade. It would have ruined all that we had built in the drive to reunite humanity, and drive off our enemies. Steps had to be taken.' He met Dorn's hard gaze. 'The legionaries they left behind, leaderless and forsaken, were too great a resource to be discarded out of hand. They did not share the fate of their fathers. You and Roboute argued in their favour, but you do not recall it.' Malcador nodded to himself. 'It fell to me to see that they were attuned to new circumstances.'
> ‘You robbed them of their memories.'
> 'I granted them a mercy!' Malcador replied, his tone wounded. 'A second chance!'
> 'What mercy is there in a lie?' Dorn thundered.
> 'Ask yourself!' The Sigillite aimed the burning head of his staff in the primarch's direction. 'You wish to know the truth, Rogal? It is this - what I shrouded in you was done by your command! You told me to do it. You and Roboute conceived of the scheme and granted me permission!'
> Dorn's scowl deepened. 'I would never countenance such a thing.'
> ‘Untrue!' Malcador slammed the base of his staff into the floor, the crash of the metal punctuating the word. 'Such was the fate of the lost, that you willingly allowed it. To make safe that knowledge.'
Surely it’s not all gossip though. They had to have gone somewhere. Two legions worth of (likely depleted) space marines don’t just disappear if you don’t want to kill them all. Where else could they have gone but to the most populous legion?
Sure it’s unconfirmed and speculative I’ll give you that but it’s not as though they could operate as un-numbered legions
I'd suggest that maybe two entire legions worth of marines might not have survived whatever befell II and XI. Maybe it was only a few thousand? Maybe even just a couple of hundred like the Emperor's Children on Terra? Maybe 5.
We have zero details.
And why just to the most populous legion? It's not like Guilliman needed it. Why not spread them evenly amongst the remaining 18?
That's why it works as hateful gossip; the Word Bearers refuse to give G-man his dues as an administrator of 500 worlds. *Of course he had to have gotten a leg up.*
There's dozens of possibilities for what could have happened to the remaining marines of II and XI. Absorption into another legion (something that the author himself expected us not to believe in context) is only one.
Or what was done to them? My theory is that they have been mindcontrolled or something, irreversibly. They couldn't be left running around like that, so they had to be purged. An ignominous end that even Dorn couldn't stomach.
I think it is more likely something was done *to* them and it needed to be covered up to maintain an image that the emperor wouldnt mistreat his marines, or denying something to chaos
That’s kind of the beauty of what we have with these two. For the moment *anything* is reasonable so it becomes a reflection of how you view the emperor, the imperium, and the universe.
The only thing we *really* know is that Dorn is utterly convinced that if they were still around the imperium would have already fallen by that point.
In context though, they didn't necessarily have to do anything worse than fail or be destroyed or turn traitor.
When the Blood Angels and Thousand Sons were thought wiped out, the Imperium began deleting each legion from the record.
And the nine traitor legions have been largely wiped from public knowledge. Even some high level Imperial staff are unaware of them, or the origins of their daemon sires.
> As in Alpharius himself was unable to uncover information regarding them.
I don't think we have anything of him trying to, right? He just states he isn't sure what happened to them.
>Dorn ended up asking him to remove the memories again. ROGAL DORN of all people couldn’t handle the knowledge of whatever those two primarchs did.
Not quite, Malcador removed the memory block temporarily. It returned on its own. Dorn didn't request it.
The 2nd Legion and 11th legion and their primarchs were completely expunged from imperial records and the emperor decreed they are not to be spoken of even by the other primarchs this was well before the Heresy.
They have been briefly mentioned a few times in the novels but pretty much nothing is known about them except a few tidbits about their involvement in early crusade campaigns.
Not to rain on your parade but that is the point, they exist so you can say your miniatures are from that legion while you let your imagination go wild.
That's how it ended up being used, but it wasn't the intended purpose
> 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.**
One probably got destroyed by the space wolves and the other destroyed with their Primarch dead in the rangdan xenocide, since in the short story the other dude mentioned, it's mentioned (I think) that the survivors were taken into the other legions
It doesn't have to be ***that*** extreme to get completely deleted. You just need to be a bog standard traitor or get wiped out.
Thousand Sons
>Publicly the returning warriors were greeted by festivities and parades though the records of the Imperial court speak of a less jubilant reception from the Emperor for whom the loss of Magnus represented a serious setback and the precursor to a more painful sacrifice. Official proclamations were issued quietly declaring the expurgation of the Thousand Sons from the Imperium's records and declaring all their possessions and chattels forfeit and treaties void and many in the court considered the matter closed.
*Inferno*
Blood Angels
>Twice before in living memory such messages were delivered to the home world of a Legiones Astartes. I reach out and take it, because I know I must. I am Arkad, Warden of the Blood Angels, guardian of Baal, and only I can do so.
>
>The tube breaks open with a twist and the parchment unfurls in my hands. The ceramite digits of my gauntlets hide the tremor in my fingers.
>
>‘I am sorry, brother.’ I hear Rubio talking, but the words are distant. My every iota of being is trapped by the writing on the scroll. Silver, on black.
>
>‘The Blood Angels are no more.’ I speak, although the voice is disconnected from me. The words it utters are not what scream through my thoughts, the denials and the howling defiance. ‘Our Legion… has been declared null.’
*Lost Son*
Best theory I've heard was that there was this 3 par war against an enemy so strong that Emperor had to pretty much throw the void dragon at it to win (am bad with names, so sorry for being this vague).
The idea is that one primarch was born to this enemy imperium, so he never even had a chance to be reunited with humanity and Emperor. And the other primarch (and his legion) were affected by some illness that was spread by the enemy, which resulted in them being wiped out by humanity.
Thus, one being forgotten and one being purged. And nobody should know as wiping out "good" chapter and having one primarch born on the enemy side are horrid things for your propaganda.
Dark Angels - paranoid basement dwellers, 5/10 bad
Emperors Children - something so bad that having Fabius Bile around was better, 7/10 bad
Iron Warriors - no sense of humour, 5/10 bad
White Scars - obsessed with vroom vroom, 3/10 bad
Space Wolves - literal furries, 8.5/10 bad
Imperial Fists - insomniac masochists, 3/10 bad
Night Lords - actually genetic sons of the fking Night Haunter, 9.5/10 bad
Blood Angels - vampires with extreme PMS BUT also extremely good looking, 7/10 bad
Iron Hands - very weird dudes, 5/10
World Eaters - BLOOD MURDER SKULLS BLOOD, 8/10 bad
Ultramarines - boringly well behaved, 2/10 bad
Death Guard - very stinky and pale, 7/10 bad
Thousand Sons - either chaos spawn or actual dust, 10/10 bad
Luna Wolves - male pattern baldness, 5/10 bad
Word Bearers - fanatic religious missionaries, 9/10 bad
Salamanders - eyes glow in dark so never fall over on way to bathroom in the dark, 1/10 bad
Raven Guard - can turn literally invisible, hot goth boyfriends, 0/10 bad
Alpha Legion - everyone is the same dude, root of minus 1/10 bad
Ironically I feel like your description of the Iron warrior flaw should be with the Fists. The IVth are more unable to take criticism. Just have faith in the fact that they do in fact make jokes, might be dark and slightly caustic, but still jokes
Alpha Legionnaires are taller to blend in with the Primarchs whenever Alpharius and/or Omegon didn't feel like attending meetings. Must have fucked with Konrad's head more than it was already fucked.
If they didn't fix the flaws it would be the EC it was so bad that they had to cull the legion down to a few hundred to a thousand.
Right now it's the Thousand Suns with the flesh change still randomly happening and most of the legion being dusted by Ahriman on accident.
From what I recall from *Ahriman Eternal*, the proposed reasoning for new rubric being created is that Ahriman left the second rubric unfinished. I think that there is a good chance that we’ll see the second rubric finished and the ongoing threat be resolved in John French’s new trilogy.
The blood angels have such a deep seated bloodlust that previously when they were the revenant legion they would massacre entire systems and would leave them with more recruits then when they had arrived, this bloodlust grew bad enough to earn the censorship of rogle dorn and the wider imperium considered exterminating them because they were so dangerous and bloodthirsty, that was until they found sanguinius. Then once the Horus heresy started the now blood angels have to deal with the black rage, a madness that they discovered once a good number of them witnessed sangunius severely wounded and seemingly killed, this rage would only get worse when sangunius did actually die later.
The original gene flawed legion is the blood angels, since the red thirst and the black rage, are flaws within the rangs of the legion and not been forced with outside influence like The Thousand Sons, which arguably is the legion with the worst gene flaw, but was forced upon them by Tzeench.
Thousand Sons- would have had to be exterminated. No other gene flaw was close to that dangerous other than maybe the vague Emperor's Children one. But that didn't inflict harm on others, just themselved.
A general "worst", all things considered.
The chance/randomness/frequency of its occurrence, the depth of its effects, its dangers amongst its Legion and others, the difficulty of curing, etc.
Naturally occuring? Chaos born? Or worship caused? Naturally occuring? Emperors Children or Thousand Sons. Both legions were almost destroyed from their innate gene-flaws. Fulgrim worked HARD AF to get his legion up to strength. Magnus dealt with Tzeentch to help his legion.
Chaos Born? Thousand Sons or Blood Angels. Tzeentch toyed with Magnus and caused the Flesh change to run wild and silent. Never knowing when it would pop up. And the demons messing with the Blood Angels on Signus Prime caused The Black Rage flaw. Gotta be fucked up to be in a bad battle and suddenly your brother goes ape shit screaming about Horus and shit then starts stabbing EVERYTHING!
Worship born? Emperor's Children I think. They are all sick and twisted fucks that would r**e you as soon as kill you, and will probably do both. They can't even help it anymore. At least if the World Eaters attack, I know they will merely slaughter me. I'd rather that then Emperor's Children. Or maybe Deathguard. They are basically all just diseases now. Not even carriers OF diseases. But like, actually just viruses.
>And the demons messing with the Blood Angels on Signus Prime caused The Black Rage flaw.
Isn't this the Red Thirst?
>Gotta be fucked up to be in a bad battle and suddenly your brother goes ape shit screaming about Horus and shit then starts stabbing EVERYTHING!
And this is the Black Rage.
The Angels had the Red Thirst BEFORE Signus Prime. Sanguinius killed those that fell to it himself whenever possible. The Black Rage was born on Signus Prime because the demons exacerbated the Red Thirst and almost killed Sanguinius. This snapped something inside the Blood Angels minds and made the Red Thirst worse, like back when they were called the Revenant. Before they met Sanguinius they were worse than the World Eaters. Sanguinius was 'curing' them, but Signus Prime made the Red Thirst worse. And CAUSED the Black Rage.
Thousans sons by a landmark.
Big e should have obliterated them from the start and took Magnus at his protégé.
"Sorry no legion for you - but I will make you the beacon of hope for our race."
Second place goes to blood angels.
Honorable mentions: space wolves for having nearly the same flaw as thousand sons but with more plot armor and a restriction to doggos.
Emperor could’ve worked on making the grey knight gene-line earlier and had that geneline under Magnus.
Letting the thousand sons as a cursed gene line continue on created a massive opening that Tzeentch was able to exploit, Khorne nearly succeeded in exploiting a very similar scenario with Sanguinius’ sons.
Thousand Sons and nothing comes close. Imagine trying to cast Testicular Torsion, and you explode into tentacles, all while being in extreme pain and losing your mind. And then, some asshat wizard binds your already damaged soul to your armor. "I FiXeD iT!" No, Ahriman, you did not.
Blood Angels? Oh, you're a little mad and you teamkill? Average World Eaters day. Cry us a river. Of blood. For the Blood God.
Emperor's Children? It got fixed by the Fuck God.
Raven Guard? There's like, 3 of them. Who cares?
Furry Legion? That's not a flaw, that's a fur suit. Terrible.
Imperial Fists? *Oh no* , they can't use that obscure ability that nobody really uses.
Salamanders? If you think that's a flaw, you're racist.
Iron Hands? They aren't wrong, the flesh *is* weak.
Death Guard? They *chose* to not shower. That's on them. And Typhus. Mostly Typhus.
Alpha Legion? They're fine, they're just faking it. Again. Hydra Stultus or whatever, dumb bastards.
Night Lords? Seems pretty stable to me. Must be the *actual* psychopaths they keep turning into Space Marines.
Everyone else not mentioned is also fine. Most of their issues are self inflicted.
Except for the Ultramarines. They are better than you.
TSons
Imagine training your entire life to be a Psyker and chaos spawning on your first spell.
Meanwhile, a wolf or white scar Psyker can blast lightning out his dick while being extremely safe from warp effect and they generally seem to be happier.
For shiz and giggles, the old run down of gene-seed traits/instability from the Index Astartes. Some of which might be in-universe superstition over actual fact.
WORD BEARERS: Tendency to dogged, unquestioning belief.
WORLD EATERS: Rumours their gene-seed was corrupt from conception, but no specifics.
NIGHT LORDS: Surprisingly pure. Prone to pale skin and dark eyes. Visions as well.
ALPHA LEGION: No real info.
EMPEROR'S CHILDREN: Apparently the most pure and stable of all the legions (though in later lore, there's some indication that the blight might have been lurking in there all along).
THOUSAND SONS: Prone to becoming psyker and mutation.
IRON WARRIORS: Tendency toward suspicion and paranoia and highly intelligent.
DEATH GUARD: Created gaunt, shadow eyed marines.
SONS OF HORUS: Pure.
RAVEN GUARD: Unstable. Missing Mucranoid and Betcher's Gland, the Malanchromic organ mutation causes pale skin- their skin becoming whiter and eyes blacker with age.
WHITE SCARS: Stable. Suspected to have inherited wild savagery and bloodlust.
IRON HANDS: Suspected genetic component to their fear of weakness.
SPACE WOLVES: Can turn aspirant into a wolf "monster" or a marine. Some marines are still at risk of becoming a Wulfen even after successful implantation.
SALAMANDERS: Stable. Unknown if their lower reflexes are caused by gene-seed. New lore points to their coal skin and red eyes coming from their gene-seed + radiation of the home world.
IMPERIAL FISTS: Stable but lost sus-an membrane and Betcher's Gland. A need to scrimshaw bones and punish themselves suspected from the gene-seed.
ULTRAMARINES: Pure and stable.
DARK ANGELS: Pure.
BLOOD ANGELS: Thirst for blood.
***TRAITORS***
**Thousand Sons** \- The flesh change was bad enough that the Imperium considered purging them and this was before Magnus rejoined the Legion and psychic power became more prevalent amongst them.
**Emperor's Children** \- Literally almost died out due to the blight upon their gene-seed causing them to shrink to but a handful.
***LOYALISTS***
**Blood Angels -** Sanguinius was scared his Legion would be purged for the Red Thirst alone and now they also have the Black Rage to contend with. Some of their Successors are viewed in a very dim light due to their barely controlled savagery.
**Space Wolves -** Their gene-seed doesn't allow for them to create Successors and it's only in the more recent times that this has seemed to change.
Loyalist: Blood Angels, absolutely hands-down. Every single Marine has to deal with the Black and the Red? (Side note: my favorite chapter after the Carchs is the Flesh Tearers.)
Close second loyalist: Dark Angels paranoia makes them act batshit
Third loyalist: Iron Hands. Their obsession with perfection is so unbelievably harmful to them as a chapter.
Thousand sons. I mean you get a boost in psychic power but you might become an eldritch horror at any moment and there is fuck all you can do about it.
Blood angels and Space wolves can basically control theirs with good self discipline most of the time.
Blood angels, definitely.
The thousand sons can be attributed to overuse of psychic powers and because of tzeentch fuckery not am existing gene flaw. They did have a high rejection rate, but with psychic powers being integral to the legion genes, I would attribute it to a lack of potential from recruits.
The emperors children blight was awful, but it wasn't a gene flaw as it was a poison given to legion by the lunar gene cults, I believe.
The space wolves were bad with their geneseed but the canis helix mostly sorted that out.
Night lords and salamanders mostly affected aesthetics.
Idk if the ravenguards curse of the Raven (whatever they call it, I can't remember tbh) was around during the heresy.
Most of the traitors, as far as I remember, had stable geneseed
Nah, the Space Wolves can’t even have successor chapters. They tried. Once. The only ones didn’t turn into Wulfen or just zerk out turned to Chaos. Complete failure. The BA and friends might turn into slavering beasts who think they’re Sanquinius and everyone is a traitor, but they are way more of them around then SW.
They couldn't have successor chapters true because of the lack of a canis helix issue. The current 40k now has SW successors, all of whom aren't dealing with a curse that will eventually wipe out all of the gene line of russ unlike the BA
The Canis Helix still affects ultra-wolves, just give time.
Meanwhile there’s three BA in the short story *Bloodline* that have all overcome the Rage - Mephiston, Lemartes, and Rafen, who was unique in that >!he succumb from shooting up Hawkboy’s blood to reclaim it from Bile and was cleansed using the same sarcophagus he was originally transformed in!< Plus Dante has held on for a long time.
Is that the salvation of their blood line? No, but the rage *is* controllable by exceptional Astartes.
Plus there’s the damn howling, “ ArrooooOooo my pack shall avenge the fallen whelp. Grr.” That’s the worst flaw, give me raging space vampires hellbent on revenge over that any day.
Lemartes hasn't overcome the flaw or the black rage. He's right in the middle of it. I don't remember Rafen falling to thirst or rage, but it's been a while since I read those books.
That's still 3 compared to basically every current space wolf as the only members of the chapter who fall for the gene curse are the last stage initiates, the incredibly rare outbreak of a wulfen in the ranks and the entire 13th company who spent 10k years in the warp. 3 to a couple of thousand or however many wolves there have been isn't too bad. The angels' flaws can hit entire companies at a time
I think dante swore off blood after he fell to the thirst and killed a couple of kids. It was only recently in the dante book where he drank blood again, most likely why he hasn't felt the effects of the flaw or thirst but is aging rapidly and is tiring more
The flesh change is literally a gene flaw. Even non-psychic members of the thousand sons are victims of the curse.
The Blood Angels curses are thanks to the Black Angel, a warp entity native to Baal.
The thousand sons had no members without at least a spark of psychic potential. Its why they were incredibly selective of the aspirants to the legion. One of the prospero tests was to eject the astral form of an aspirant, and they had to travel the planet, this was mentioned in the 8th Ed codex. Simerly magnus, the psychic primarch on the psychic planet wouldn't recruit people with out atleast a spark of power.
That's bs for the red flaw. The revenant legion exhibited the red flaw from the beginning of the legions history. it's one of the reasons sanguinius implemented control measures like art and a more disciplined chain of command into his legion in the first place.
The black rage has a direct cause of sanguinius death, and the red thirst was proved to be worsened twice by massive damage suffered to sanguinius, knocked unconscious and ultimate death.
> “Not all of the Thousand Sons were gifted with the same potential as sorcerers and mystics. Whether stunted in some sorcerous experiment gone wrong, broken for some transgression against the rules of the Legion or simply afflicted with some defect in their gene-seed, **some were not only incapable of channelling the ethereal but suffered pain at its touch**. These **outcasts** would be granted the most difficult and dangerous of missions, **sent out to find an honourable death in battle rather than linger as something less than a full warrior of the Thousand Sons**.” -*Traitor Legions Astartes Army Book 2nd Edition*
The *Eidolon of Suffering* is a warlord trait for a thousand son preator who has 0 ability to utilize psychic powers and is treated as an outcast of a legion as a direct result of it. For all intents and purposes an *Eidolon of Suffering* has 0 ability to overuse psychic powers like you suggested in your first post.
> “'The warp is a mirror to the material realm,' said the bloody angel. 'The shape of the warp is the shape of the mortal soul. If it harms us, we only have ourselves to blame. You are strong with the warp. You live. It walked past Mephiston to stand between two of the great sandstone pillars, and looked up at the battling angels. '**These creatures are the reflections of your bloodline. The golden angel is your purity, the black angel is your flaw**.' The bloody angel turned back to Mephiston. 'You are, all of you, of the blood of your father. In the least of you is a residue of his power. Thousands of years of sacrifice, denial and endless war. **Every time one of your brothers creates a work of beauty, or lays down his life for those weaker than he, it strengthens the angel in gold. Each time one succumbs to the flaw and in his madness slays his brothers, the black is made more powerful**.'
> The black angel swung at the gold angel's head.
Silver blade intercepted black. The heavens rang. ‘**The black is winning**,' said Mephiston.
> ‘The Black Rage will one day destroy all those of the Blood. It is inevitable,' said the bloody angel.
'The question is, how those of the Blood choose to spend their days before that happens. As paragons, or as monsters?' He stared at Mephiston with eye lenses of living blood set in a helmet of the same. 'The Great Rift has split the sky. The Emperor stirs. The minds of men are opening. Your madness calls all the louder because of it. Your priests and your tech-magi search fruitlessly for a cure. **The Black Rage is not a malady of the body. It is a flaw in your souls**.'” -*Darkness in Blood*
Both angels have existed for millions of years, and have led xeno species that once lived on Baal prior to humanity ever coming to ti.
I'll admit that some thousand sons don't have psychic potential.
But that doesn't prove the point you made about the blood angels gene flaw. As I mentioned, the revenant legion had the red thirst before the legion ever went to baal, if the black rage is truly caused by this warp entity and not the death of sanguinius then it would have manifested before his death and not after it.
I would like to have the quote where it mentions both angels having existed for millions of years and having led xenos species that lived on baal prior to humanity coming ever going there. Unless you don't have a quote to prove that claim.
If the millions of years old statement isn't real, it's entirely possible that like older lore, the two angels are sanguinius soul split into multiple parts.
If it is real, then sanguinius' had no impact on the blood angels' soul, which is not true
> “He gestured at a space between two of the outer pillars. **An image appeared there, presenting Mephiston with a vision of spindly xenos, heavily robed and bedecked in bloodstone, labouring to raise monuments long since ground to dust**.
> ‘And there, **where millions of years later men lived in brief paradise upon Baal Indicus and Baal Fortunata.** The first men here knew the angels too, but refused to believe they existed, until times changed and they let the black angel in.” -*Darkness in Blood*
> “Names come and go. Those names became corrupted in form. **In time, they will be forgotten completely, as will your species. Another race, then another, then another, will come and uncover the things left behind in days long dead**, and wonder what manner of hand shaped them.' The bloody angel turned its attention back to Mephiston. 'Or the universe will fall to Chaos, and yours will be the last of creation's children, and **no more beings will choose their path twixt grace and rage**, but all will be madness, and pandemonium will reign.'” -*Darkness in Blood*
Same chapter as the excerpt that I posted before
The novel has Mephiston become the host for the Black Angel, as the Sanguinor is the host for the Golden Angel, in order to prevent the Black Angel from destroying the Blood Angels as a gene line.
> “'This is different. It is more than just the Chapter's gene-seed. **There is a shadow in him - the same shadow that was in Sanguinius**, but it has been made manifest. He has been born three times and his third birth has made him uniquely potent, uniquely suitable for the Nine Sacraments. I have devised a way to lever his pieces apart - to break him into the stimulus we need.'” -*Zadkiel to Magnus the Red, Mephiston: City of Light*
A thousand sons sorcerer suggests to Magnus, that the Black Angel was held within Sanguinius prior to his death.
In general the timeline and mechanics are weird, but there is an explicit narrative thread regarding the Black Angel and its connection to the Black Rage in the Mephiston novels.
Thanks for the quotes! Tbh that sounds incredibly stupid as far as lore decisions go. It feels like sanguinius' death gets more and more pointless with each new book that comes out.
I don't think I'm gonna read darkness in the blood now, tbf. Dante and devastation were awesome af so this might be a bit of a letdown
Legions? Not chapters?
Gene-flaw? If we talk about genetic this would be
Space Wolves, Salamanders, Raven Guard.
Too much murations.
Psyker curse-flaw=Thousand Sons and Blood Angels. Not genetic one.
....
Proto-Emperror Childrens Legion genetic error what made them die was fixed quickly, way before Heresy.
Tsons. You get superpowers at the cost of becoming the 40k equivalent of a super mutant. It was bad enough that the imperium was considering purging them.
I have always thought that the reason that the Tsons mutate is not because they have psychic powers, but because they use them so much and so reckless. Like, we know psychic powers can cause mutation and the Tsons uses their powers a lot.
The impression that I got is that while restraint can hold it back and buy time, it doesn’t prevent the flesh change outright. The thousand sons would still get claimed by their curse even if they don’t overdo it with their powers. The flesh change was still a looming threat for individuals within the legion that exercised greater levels of restraint, such as Revuel Arvida. Edit: excerpt from *Path to Heaven* between Revuel Arvida (Thousand Sons sergeant) and Yesugei (White Scars chief stormseer) > “Next to him was Arvida. The sorcerer's breathing was coarse. ‘If I ask you if all is well, my brother,' Yesugei said quietly, 'I believe I know what you will tell me.' Arvida did not reply. He seemed to be rocking very fractionally, as if steeling himself. > ‘You will tell me yes, all is well,' Yesugei went on. ‘You are weary, that is all. And who of us is not weary?' Yesugei looked back out at the void. The great sphere now filled most of the view forward, and the edges of its constituent crystals were becoming visible. They were massive elongated octahedrons, regular in form and size, their facets perfectly angled and regular, as if cut by a las-beam. The spectral glow that coiled inside them was like the aether itself, ever-changing, writhing within a glassy prison. > ‘Perhaps is easier if I tell you what I know,' Yesugei went on, his voice soft enough to keep the conversation between the two of them. ‘You are not a fool, but neither am I. **You learn to put control on it, but you cannot keep it fully hidden**. Your gene-father could not, so what hope you have? **There is no shame. You have done well to keep it secret, so dormant, but is running away from you now**.' Still Arvida did not respond. The rocking grew more intense. > ‘**It is the warp, yes?**’ asked Yesugei. '**It is worse, when you use your art**. I encouraged you. If I caused you greater pain, then-' > ‘You are not the cause.' The sorcerer's voice was hesitant. Somewhere behind his helm, his features must have been stiff with suppressed agony. Yesugei placed his hand on Arvida's forearm. > 'What can I do?' ‘Nothing.' > Neither spoke for a while. The Stormbird flight neared the sphere's perimeter, the craft buffeted as the first forks of lightning shot around and under them. ‘Is it obvious?' asked Arvida at length. 'I do not think so. **You have been careful**.' Arvida nodded stiffly. '**It will be worse. In there**.' I know. You could have refused to go.' > No, I wish to see it. These are the places where the warp was studied. Who knows?' Arvida sighed - a grating sound like filtering stones through a sieve. 'Chasing down diminishing hopes, grasping at the last of them as they gutter out. There are days when I think your Shiban is right. Force the battle. Get it over with.' > At the mention of Shiban, Yesugei felt a brief twinge of pain. 'If moment comes,' he said. If you cannot control it...' > ‘**I remain the master**.' Very well. Then I trust you.' -*Path to Heaven*
Even nonpsyker TS marines developed the gene flaw. (Yes, there were nonpsyker TS marines. These guys and the weaker psykers were who got turned into dust marine rubrics.) Only biomancy held the flaw in check, and not indefinitely. There is an argument, perhaps valid, that the flesh change was not due wholly to gene flaw, though, but was instead due in part of in whole to Tzeentch.
You are partially correct. Some sources state that it’s the weaker psykers that were transformed intro rubricae, while others state that it targeted the sons of Magnus indiscriminately. Considering the fact that a non-insignificant number of the Sekhmet, the elite veteran bodyguards of Magnus the Red, were transformed into rubricae as a result of the Rubric of Ahriman, I lean towards the ladder proposal more so than the former.
Vertical well could be that the flesh change targeted indiscriminately but the rubric hit the weakest 90% of the legion, then tzeentch eased off on the change when it had its prize. I am fond of the idea that it's all part of tzeentchs plan and not just a happy coincidence
IIRC in the TSons novel it's mentioned that a Warp Storm erupted over Terra when the Big E was producing TSons geneseed, and he used it as a catalyst for its creation - which probably lead to major instabilities.
my headcanon is they were unlucky enough to both NOT set any kind of "filter" on their warp power usage (according to my another headcanon the warpfilters like imperial cult or power of fenris have the same power as waaagh psy-field - strong shared belief enables them to indeed filter out warp energies) AND having their power taken from the part of Sea of Souls directly controlled by Tzeenth instantly having him notice them and put an unwanted "blessing" upon them, and what could Tzeenth blessing be if not uncontrollable nonsystematic **change**
I think that if a filter would’ve provided ample protection against the curse of the flesh change, that we would’ve seen it with Revuel Arvida. He was a sergeant whose position in the legion was held back due to taking greater precautions than most of the legion, who then had a long recovery process under the guidance and tutelage of the chief stormseer of the White Scars.
Was he working with the Stormseer before the Flesh Change or did the Stormseer aid the recovery? The way you wrote it made me think the Stormseer’s guidance may have encouraged the use of safety filters.
He was discovered by the White Scars in *Scars* when they went to Prospero to investigate what happened. Due to stress and malnourishment, Revuel Arvida left Prospero w/ them in weak condition and spent months recovering. During his recovery process, he spent a great deal of time with the White Scars’ chief stormseer, who put a great deal of effort into retraining him with regard to how to use the warp. He fell to the flesh change later in *Path to Heaven*, with the chief stormseer noticing the signs of it and blaming his encouragement for the flesh change taking greater hold over Arvida.
They have the flesh change because they were cursed by Tzeench.
The Scars used the term “drinking deeply from the goblet of power” or something like that. They, the Sons and the Blood Angels were the Big 3 psykers and the Scars Librarians were more moderate in their use of the warp while the Thousand Sons were summoning Daemon Servants and shit
The flesh change was most widespread before the arrival of Magnus, during which time the legion was significantly less psyker focused. A huge amount of them were still psykers, but they didn’t use their powers nearly as much or draw on them as deeply
Wasn’t that because Magnus sold an eye to Tzeentch to buy time against the problem?
This is before any of that, even before the Crusade left Terra Ahriman’s brother was mutating
I get that, before the Great Crusade the Thousand Sons mutation was worse. It slowed when Magnus showed up because he sold an eye to slow it down.
It absolutely did
Pretty sure it's rather a curse or deseas of a legion, rather then result of warp usage.
Warp exposure and usage do strengthen the curse of the flesh change (it does as well for the Wulfen and the Black Rage). Even members of the thousand sons that are more cautious with their usage of the warp have an ongoing conflict to hold the flesh change back.
My headcanon is that the Flesh Change is an unstable version of Magnus' own shapeshifting powers.
How are they viewed by other chapters? IIRC, even the Black Dragons are shunned pretty well across the chapters and are/were on the inquisition's naughty but not quite heresy list because there's no actual mutation noted in their geneseed. They bring a game of dungeons and dragons wherever they go too.
Even if you attribute the flesh change to a Tzeentch curse and not the geneseed itself, it still has to be theThousand Sons for the extremely high rejection rate and the universally hated space magic.
“wow, people are basically racist towards me AND I might turn into a horrible mutant at any given moment? sign me up!”
Well for an adult Psyker it's a good way to avoid getting dragged away and the kids aren't told.
Except the Wolves were the oldest aspirants and they were still late teens and early twenties, most Legions selected their aspirants in the twelve to fifteen range. Die for the Emperor or get snuffed by the Emperor - Not amazing options.
Yep
I’d vote Thousand Sons because they can randomly change into a chaos spawn.
Well, if you put your mind to it you can too.
Inspirational
They could if they had anything to be changed from anymore lol
Thousand sons literally turning into warp spawn balls of flesh was pretty rough, but raven guard and night lords have black eyes!?!? SPOOKY!
From the loyalist side, pretty sure the Blood Angels. It's gotten to a point that several BA chapters have to make strong efforts to contain their flaws, some less successful than others. Some stop caring and instead embrace their curses. Some of the most violent and vile chapters come from the BA line, such as the Flesh Tearers, the Flesh Eaters, the Angels Vermillion, the Knights of Blood, etc. From the traitor side, the Thousand Sons for sure. Their gene-flaw literally turned them into Chaos spawns, mindless amorphous monsters that killed anything in sight and died gruesome deaths.
I was looking through this for the BA argument. Cause how terrible for sanguinius to have to kill his own sons. I realize others did too but I dont think anyone else does it out of mercy.
depends a bit TS are bad but somewhat rare, was never fixed though, just pushed back EC nearly wiped them out but was pretty much fixed BA not as bad in the legion days but got worse and is rly fcking bad in 40k SW bad but more a 40k thing
I think one could say that TS was fixed post-Heresy with the Rubric. "Fixed" being a relative term, as it also meant the ignoble Thanossnapification of 90% of the already depleted Legion, but *technically* the ones around during the present setting no longer have anything to fear from the Flesh Change.
True. Dust doesn’t mutate
That’s what *you* think, grins in ***the WARP bullshittery***
Dammit Ahriman, what did you do *now?!*
thanossnapification is a fantastic word and i'm stealing it
What was the ec problem?
They’re genetic code would rapidly degrade and they would die and this issue persisted untill Fulgrim was found. At the start of the great crusade there were only a few thousand emperors children when other legions had 10s to 100s of thousands.
They also got absolutely fucked by the wholesale destruction of one of their gene vaults being transported and the one on Luna got infected and fucked up too. So someone attempted to completely wipe them out after they got decimated rescuing the emperor from an assassination attempt.
Probably Malcador. He knew Fulgrim was a douche.
It was the last act of the Selenar after they have been conquered by the Imperium.
It would make sense - it takes a cunt to know a douche.
Malcador was easily the coolest dude in 30k. So human
I like all the times he trolls beings that could rip him in half like the Juggernaut in Deadpool 2.
It seemed like he could have ripped them apart tbh, until he was overly weakened by the end of the seige
By the time Fulgrim was found there were only 200
It was way fewer than that. By the time they found Fulgrim, the Emperor's Children were only a couple of hundred.
There was only a Two Hundred left when they reunited with Fulgrim.
The original thousand sons
Gene seed got infected with some kind of blight that caused there numbers to drop to only 200. If I remember correctly it's been hinted that it's warp related somehow.
It was the Selenar that sabotaged the EC gene seed.
>If I remember correctly it's been hinted that it's warp related somehow. There's some suggestion of that in the Bile books, though it's not 100% clear if that's specific to his particular strain of the blight or the whole legion. I think it leans towards the latter.
With the blood angels the red thirst was actually worse in the days Pre Sanguinius back when they where called the Revenant Legion. Nassir Amit has some flashback scenes to those days and to when Sangiunius joined them in Echoes of Eternity. they other legions avoided working with the 9th back then even the War Hounds(later the world rate real had a better reputation than them. we also see this in the Sangiunius primarch novel. the only legal. that had a worse reputation in the early days was the night lords(see the Sigismund novel for that, even early one pre Konrad, the other legions held the 8th in contempt for the their tactics and actions). the Primarchs have a psychic effect on their sons we see this a lot in the heresy and siege novels and also later with Guilliman and the Lion in 40k. when sangiunius first Mets his sons as shown in both echoes of eternity and his primarch novels he seems to calm them and his presence curbs their tendencies why also negating some of the effects of the red thirst, we also see this in fear to tread where he comes upon a son who has fallen to the red thirst while campaigning with the 16th(this is how horus alone of his brothers learned of I the red thirst) and the Blood angel briefly seems to snap out of his fugue. In 40k when Gilliland or the Lion have entered the battlefield their presence seems into act like a switch for their respective sons. who the normally staid Ultramarines and Dark Angels become bolder in the presence of their fathers. we even see TBE effect a traitor primarch can have on a son who fundamentally disagrees with him, when Loken encounters Horus after Istavaan in the novel vengeful spirit and even in the end and rhe Death part 3 there is a what seems to be a built In complusion for him to join his father and he struggles with it both times because he knows his father is wrong and Horus actions are unforgivable. the Black rage gets called a gene flaw but its really the same as the Red thirst, the issues the EC and TS have of the curse of the Wulfen, its more a psychic wound that was embedded into the legion when Sangiunius was brutally killed by his brother. one that effects all his sons because they carry his genes and the wound latches on to that not something like the red thirst that pre what we have been seen was a flaw from the outset. e Sons of the blood are not even unique in carrying a psychic wound that physically effects them post heresy. The sons of Dorn can fall into something called Dorn's darkness where they enter a catatonic state reliving their Primarchs darkest moment, finding the Bodies of the Emperor and Sangiunius on the Vengeful spirit.
I only now hear of Dorn‘s Darkness and the Black Rage sounds like child‘s play in comparison. Do they also THINK they are dorn or are fully aware who they are?
No. they go full catatonic, they do not think they are dorn, they just see it, over and over again and can't move. its different than the black rage where they think they are there and see sangiunius dead body and see everyone else as horus. I would compare the black rage to a Viking berserker rage that cannot be stopped. while I would compare dorns darkness to what happens to the young soldier in the novella and film Johnny got his gun. if you want a quick way to see what I am talking about watch the metallica official music video for their song "One". dorns darkness is being trapped inside your own head unable to move and just seeing horrors over and over agajn. both are terrifying but in my opinion Dorns darkness triggers a primal fear.
It only presents in the Excoriators chapter One marine lost in The Darkness seems to experience Dorn's POV whilst still maintaining awareness of his own self: >The dark nothingness about me saps my soul. Blood courses through my body. Battle beckons. I tremble not with dread but with expectation, the impending realisation of my genetic heritage. I am a warrior down to the last molecule of my being. I was engineered to kill for something greater than myself, to serve the Father-of-All with blade, bolt – even my last breath, and all those preceding. > >I live the lost brothers I have ended. Their bodies fallen and terrible in the murderous ruin they have committed – one upon the other and myself upon them all. Mighty brothers lie twisted and broken. Their god-flesh is still. Fratricide over. The chime of battle hangs about their corpses. Their weapons decorate the changing floor. My own joins them. > >A doom, so deep, has reached me. A pain so clear and a loss so searing to my existence that it shatters my soul. Like a dread nova, erupting through histories both galactic and personal, the Darkness finds me. For a moment, there is light in the nothingness. The Emperor of Mankind is with me – here, in this hopeless place. His presence and legacy a beacon in the blackness. Withering to look upon. Impossible not to. I approach as one might his doom. Hesitant. Uncomprehending. Child-like. The moment overwhelms me and tears cascade down my blood-flecked cheeks. Then like a nova – brief, beautiful and sad in its distant diminishing – the beacon fades. I fall to my knees and I weep uncontrollably, for there is nothing left to do. No higher power to whom I can appeal. > >The star has faded. The light is gone. In its place is dead space, laced with the poisonous shockwave of the aftermath, trembling through the ages. All that is left is the bottomless grief of the orphan Angel. **My hearts know his immortal sorrow. Rogal Dorn. My father’s loss. My loss through his. I feel what he felt, stood over the Emperor. I know the fear and misery he allowed himself. That moment of doubt and horror-stricken possibility becomes my eternity. It saturates me with its despair**. **I sink deep within myself and find a greater darkness there. An Imperium without an Emperor. A fatherless humanity. An eternity without direction. Dorn’s Darkness**. *The Legion of the Damned*\- Sanders
Tbf, the TS was more just tzeentch fucking with them than it was any gene flaw. They got turned into "textbook" chaos spawn
Emperors children geneseed was actually really really pure, it’s just their geneseed got infected by the blight
I know BA is Blood Angels, but my first though was "Bad Angels"
EC weren't exactly a gene-seed flaw, the suggestion being it was a sabotage of their seed reserves. Newly formulated gene-seed was pure as snow.
>EC nearly wiped them out but was pretty much fixed From what I understood basically the only one who's still alive with the original flaw is Fabius, and it still wrecks him.
I know a lot of you guys are pointing out the Flesh Change, Red Thirst, and wolf-boys. However, the World Eaters had the flaw that Angron was their dad.
Having the second worst dad in the setting is a pretty big flaw.
Word Bearers. They are cursed with being Word Bearers.
Also Erebus is your brother.
Worse, Erebus is your *superior.*
Imagine having that prick as your older brother. I would throw myself into a river somewhere.
Erebus would probably stand by the river’s edge to make sure you drown tbh
And then perform horrific rituals on your spirit afterwards.
Every time i think of Erebus i'm reminded of Argel Tal. Damn
I'd put my bolter under my chin if I had to take orders from Erebus.
Word Bearers do genuinely have a flaw though - their geneseed causes them to become zealots.
I fail to see the flaw
From the author of The First Heretic: >The First Heretic screams the very same thing. The importance Lorgar places on Kor Phaeron and Erebus. The ranks they hold in the Legion, from their humble beginnings, carried to the top by Lorgar. The way he speaks with them - Kor Phaeron especially - and the way they speak to him. The climactic moment he finally goes against their will. And so on. **There's no genetic mandate for the Legion to worship anything (that's an overly simplistic and inaccurate reading of it, but you see it passed around sometimes) and I'm not sure there's any real evidence for a predisposition for zealotry in the terms some folks say, but there is a brief mention made of the chemicals in their brains reacting a certain way to Lorgar. And even then, it's not made a big deal out of, or some breathtakingly huge change in their genetic make-up. Argel Tal even asks "Is our loyalty bred into our bones?" and the answer is a direct “No."** ADB
The Horus Heresy Black Books paint it as more of a need for a cause than a need for Worship or Loyalty - that part comes from lorgar: >"It might seem strange that warriors who had fought to cast down gods would embrace those same beliefs, but this ignores the basic nature of the fanatic. At their core they need a cause around which to build their world. What that cause is can be changed, so long as the heat of its fire fills them. In their hearts the XVIIth fell into the grasp of religion because part of them had always wanted to, part of them wanted there to be more to belief than rationality." From Horus Heresy Book Two: Massacre Genetic issues have also been strongly hinted at elsewhere: >"The gene-seed of the Word Bearers was originally thought to be pure, but events subsequent to the Horus Heresy revealed the weaknesses inherent in their genetic make-up. The Space Marines of the Word Bearers have a marked tendency towards dogged, unquestioning belief and stubbornness that verges on insanity." From Index Astartes: Word Bearers >Sor Talgron hated the zealotry. He hated the metaphysical need that seemed gene-coded into his battle-brothers – there was a new and desperate hunger in the Legion to believe in something more than the struggle and pain and torment that was mortal existence." From "The Purge" by Anthony Reynolds
Yeah, the Black Books are strongly biased/unreliable narrator. Sor Talgron qualifies it with "seemed". etc etc What ADB is getting at here is that in-universe people blame the gene-seed, and there's even a nugget of possible truth in it being an influence, but that the legion still had willpower and freedom of choice. They weren't slaves to it
The same kind of zealots that all the loyalist legions became in the end? The Templars could give the OG Word Bearers a run for their money when it comes to their disregard for the imperial truth
Fair point.
Its funny i was coming in here to make the same joke about Ultramarines
on a more serious note : they had very stable geneseed and were most likely the second biggest legion at their heights.
Only true answer.
Its the catalepsean node. The area of the brain that controls sleep and dreams also influences devotion and religious faith. They're cursed to worship whoever or whatever they follow
Interesting, I just thought they were cursed with a terminal case of stupid.
Lorgar built his first church WAY before the Emperor found him, its his genes
Probably the 2 expunged legions, Emps wasn't a superstitious guy so whatever was wrong with them must have been very serious to just completely delete them. Other legions did some seriously heinous things so it has to be more than just something they did.
Yeah, they might have let an alien live or something. /s
Each Primarch is a embodiment of a personality trait of Big E, so I like the idea the two expunged ones represented Peace or Tolerance or something like that. They gotta go!
Headcannon- they represented Big E's deeply suppressed fetish fantasies about xenos and furry mutants.
Gun to my head that's genuinely what I'd go with. They were not just idealistic but genuinely nice. That's why Malcy was so adamant about them not being mentioned either. It's just not supposed to be part of the program.
second primarch: blessed are the peacemakers— emperor: —nope nope not this again \*blam\*
Could be other reason, like having a Legion/Primarch of blanks that were resistant to his supernatural charisma and proved too willing to question Jimmy Space.
Can you detail more on the 2 expunged legions? Never heard of this.
Basically the 2nd and 11th legions don’t exist. All knowledge of them and their primarchs have been wiped from imperial record. As in Alpharius himself was unable to uncover information regarding them. There’s a few examples of sentimentality where “the forgotten and the purged” are mentioned but never by name and even the primarchs while chastise their brothers for mentioning them. There’s even a short story where rogal dorn and malcador get into a fight as he realizes malcador had removed the memories of these two primarchs from dorns head. Malcador decided to let dorn remember them and the situation……. Dorn ended up asking him to remove the memories again. *ROGAL DORN* of all people couldn’t handle the knowledge of whatever those two primarchs did. So there are 20 primarchs. But there are actually only 18. But there’s actually 19.
Holy shit. When you take into account all the messed up stuff the imperium does one can only imagine how horrifically messed up those primarchs were. Is there any hint at all about what they did?
Nothing. Basically the only thing we knows is that it probably happened during the rangdan xenocides during the great crusade. We also have plenty of suggestions that the space wolves were the ones to do the deed. Nothing confirmed but Alpharius was convinced that Russ had something to do with it. We also know that around the time of these two primarchs being purged the ultramarines had a surge of new recruits and malcador all but admits to wiping these legions memories so as to not “waste” them. My thing is that despite everything the traitors did during the horus heresy…….. knowledge of them still exists. Your average citizen doesn’t know but there higher ups in the imperium have access to that knowledge as I understand it. So if the Horus heresy isn’t enough to have all knowledge of you wiped out……. What did those two do?
[Some context](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/15t75j1/comment/jwidx51/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) on the Ultramarines stuff from the author of that in-universe gossip. The Ultramarines surging around the same time is pretty much character conflation. Correlation not causation. And the likely reason that the nine aren't as deeply scrubbed as the two is probably for a couple of reasons: 1. The ability to do so died with Malcador 2. The nine traitor legions still exist, the Imperium is better off not totally forgetting who they are since they're still a present danger. II and XI don't seem to be.
> Malcador slowly moved back, out of the ornate sword's killing arc. 'The… loss of the Second and the Eleventh was such a wound upon us, and it threatened the ideals at the heart of the Great Crusade. It would have ruined all that we had built in the drive to reunite humanity, and drive off our enemies. Steps had to be taken.' He met Dorn's hard gaze. 'The legionaries they left behind, leaderless and forsaken, were too great a resource to be discarded out of hand. They did not share the fate of their fathers. You and Roboute argued in their favour, but you do not recall it.' Malcador nodded to himself. 'It fell to me to see that they were attuned to new circumstances.' > ‘You robbed them of their memories.' > 'I granted them a mercy!' Malcador replied, his tone wounded. 'A second chance!' > 'What mercy is there in a lie?' Dorn thundered. > 'Ask yourself!' The Sigillite aimed the burning head of his staff in the primarch's direction. 'You wish to know the truth, Rogal? It is this - what I shrouded in you was done by your command! You told me to do it. You and Roboute conceived of the scheme and granted me permission!' > Dorn's scowl deepened. 'I would never countenance such a thing.' > ‘Untrue!' Malcador slammed the base of his staff into the floor, the crash of the metal punctuating the word. 'Such was the fate of the lost, that you willingly allowed it. To make safe that knowledge.' Surely it’s not all gossip though. They had to have gone somewhere. Two legions worth of (likely depleted) space marines don’t just disappear if you don’t want to kill them all. Where else could they have gone but to the most populous legion? Sure it’s unconfirmed and speculative I’ll give you that but it’s not as though they could operate as un-numbered legions
I'd suggest that maybe two entire legions worth of marines might not have survived whatever befell II and XI. Maybe it was only a few thousand? Maybe even just a couple of hundred like the Emperor's Children on Terra? Maybe 5. We have zero details. And why just to the most populous legion? It's not like Guilliman needed it. Why not spread them evenly amongst the remaining 18? That's why it works as hateful gossip; the Word Bearers refuse to give G-man his dues as an administrator of 500 worlds. *Of course he had to have gotten a leg up.* There's dozens of possibilities for what could have happened to the remaining marines of II and XI. Absorption into another legion (something that the author himself expected us not to believe in context) is only one.
Or what was done to them? My theory is that they have been mindcontrolled or something, irreversibly. They couldn't be left running around like that, so they had to be purged. An ignominous end that even Dorn couldn't stomach.
I think it is more likely something was done *to* them and it needed to be covered up to maintain an image that the emperor wouldnt mistreat his marines, or denying something to chaos
That’s kind of the beauty of what we have with these two. For the moment *anything* is reasonable so it becomes a reflection of how you view the emperor, the imperium, and the universe. The only thing we *really* know is that Dorn is utterly convinced that if they were still around the imperium would have already fallen by that point.
In context though, they didn't necessarily have to do anything worse than fail or be destroyed or turn traitor. When the Blood Angels and Thousand Sons were thought wiped out, the Imperium began deleting each legion from the record. And the nine traitor legions have been largely wiped from public knowledge. Even some high level Imperial staff are unaware of them, or the origins of their daemon sires.
> As in Alpharius himself was unable to uncover information regarding them. I don't think we have anything of him trying to, right? He just states he isn't sure what happened to them. >Dorn ended up asking him to remove the memories again. ROGAL DORN of all people couldn’t handle the knowledge of whatever those two primarchs did. Not quite, Malcador removed the memory block temporarily. It returned on its own. Dorn didn't request it.
The 2nd Legion and 11th legion and their primarchs were completely expunged from imperial records and the emperor decreed they are not to be spoken of even by the other primarchs this was well before the Heresy. They have been briefly mentioned a few times in the novels but pretty much nothing is known about them except a few tidbits about their involvement in early crusade campaigns.
Whoah that's pretty wild. I wonder what they did to deserve that, or maybe emps viewed them as genetically invalid in some manner.
I know that they’re unlikely to ever go into detail what those 2 legions/primarchs did, but goddamn it piques my interest something fierce.
Not to rain on your parade but that is the point, they exist so you can say your miniatures are from that legion while you let your imagination go wild.
Oh I know. It’s world building, and they gain nothing from removing the mystique from a situation like that.
That's how it ended up being used, but it wasn't the intended purpose > 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.**
Well, they were called the S-... Wait a min, somebody is knocking at my door.
This is a pretty meta take on how all the lost legion clues work in the books.
One probably got destroyed by the space wolves and the other destroyed with their Primarch dead in the rangdan xenocide, since in the short story the other dude mentioned, it's mentioned (I think) that the survivors were taken into the other legions
It doesn't have to be ***that*** extreme to get completely deleted. You just need to be a bog standard traitor or get wiped out. Thousand Sons >Publicly the returning warriors were greeted by festivities and parades though the records of the Imperial court speak of a less jubilant reception from the Emperor for whom the loss of Magnus represented a serious setback and the precursor to a more painful sacrifice. Official proclamations were issued quietly declaring the expurgation of the Thousand Sons from the Imperium's records and declaring all their possessions and chattels forfeit and treaties void and many in the court considered the matter closed. *Inferno* Blood Angels >Twice before in living memory such messages were delivered to the home world of a Legiones Astartes. I reach out and take it, because I know I must. I am Arkad, Warden of the Blood Angels, guardian of Baal, and only I can do so. > >The tube breaks open with a twist and the parchment unfurls in my hands. The ceramite digits of my gauntlets hide the tremor in my fingers. > >‘I am sorry, brother.’ I hear Rubio talking, but the words are distant. My every iota of being is trapped by the writing on the scroll. Silver, on black. > >‘The Blood Angels are no more.’ I speak, although the voice is disconnected from me. The words it utters are not what scream through my thoughts, the denials and the howling defiance. ‘Our Legion… has been declared null.’ *Lost Son*
Best theory I've heard was that there was this 3 par war against an enemy so strong that Emperor had to pretty much throw the void dragon at it to win (am bad with names, so sorry for being this vague). The idea is that one primarch was born to this enemy imperium, so he never even had a chance to be reunited with humanity and Emperor. And the other primarch (and his legion) were affected by some illness that was spread by the enemy, which resulted in them being wiped out by humanity. Thus, one being forgotten and one being purged. And nobody should know as wiping out "good" chapter and having one primarch born on the enemy side are horrid things for your propaganda.
Just their primarchs considering the bulk of their manpower just got palette swapped and became Ultra Marines
[Probably not](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/15t75j1/comment/jwidx51/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
Meh, too late with that clarification, it’s my head cannon now.
All's fair in love and headcanon
Space Wolves in modern 40k had it pretty bad for a while. Before primaris basically every successor chapter would fail due to excessive mutation.
Thing is... Is that really a problem for them, personally?
Probably not, but it might give them a bad reputation.
Dark Angels - paranoid basement dwellers, 5/10 bad Emperors Children - something so bad that having Fabius Bile around was better, 7/10 bad Iron Warriors - no sense of humour, 5/10 bad White Scars - obsessed with vroom vroom, 3/10 bad Space Wolves - literal furries, 8.5/10 bad Imperial Fists - insomniac masochists, 3/10 bad Night Lords - actually genetic sons of the fking Night Haunter, 9.5/10 bad Blood Angels - vampires with extreme PMS BUT also extremely good looking, 7/10 bad Iron Hands - very weird dudes, 5/10 World Eaters - BLOOD MURDER SKULLS BLOOD, 8/10 bad Ultramarines - boringly well behaved, 2/10 bad Death Guard - very stinky and pale, 7/10 bad Thousand Sons - either chaos spawn or actual dust, 10/10 bad Luna Wolves - male pattern baldness, 5/10 bad Word Bearers - fanatic religious missionaries, 9/10 bad Salamanders - eyes glow in dark so never fall over on way to bathroom in the dark, 1/10 bad Raven Guard - can turn literally invisible, hot goth boyfriends, 0/10 bad Alpha Legion - everyone is the same dude, root of minus 1/10 bad
Night Lords actually have some of the most pure and stable gene seed
>Space Wolves - literal furries, 8.5/10 bad Implying this is bad
Ironically I feel like your description of the Iron warrior flaw should be with the Fists. The IVth are more unable to take criticism. Just have faith in the fact that they do in fact make jokes, might be dark and slightly caustic, but still jokes
Raptors still best. Open thinking using codex as a "guide" rather than rulebook. One of few who prefer camouflage.
When you break it down like that clearly is the Space Wolves
Alpha Legionnaires are taller to blend in with the Primarchs whenever Alpharius and/or Omegon didn't feel like attending meetings. Must have fucked with Konrad's head more than it was already fucked.
I readjust my scoring then: extra tall, 7/10 minimum
Male pattern baldness... Am I a Luna wolf ?
If they didn't fix the flaws it would be the EC it was so bad that they had to cull the legion down to a few hundred to a thousand. Right now it's the Thousand Suns with the flesh change still randomly happening and most of the legion being dusted by Ahriman on accident.
From what I recall from *Ahriman Eternal*, the proposed reasoning for new rubric being created is that Ahriman left the second rubric unfinished. I think that there is a good chance that we’ll see the second rubric finished and the ongoing threat be resolved in John French’s new trilogy.
maybe Blood angels because they have two gene seed flaws (red thirst, black rage)
The blood angels have such a deep seated bloodlust that previously when they were the revenant legion they would massacre entire systems and would leave them with more recruits then when they had arrived, this bloodlust grew bad enough to earn the censorship of rogle dorn and the wider imperium considered exterminating them because they were so dangerous and bloodthirsty, that was until they found sanguinius. Then once the Horus heresy started the now blood angels have to deal with the black rage, a madness that they discovered once a good number of them witnessed sangunius severely wounded and seemingly killed, this rage would only get worse when sangunius did actually die later.
The original gene flawed legion is the blood angels, since the red thirst and the black rage, are flaws within the rangs of the legion and not been forced with outside influence like The Thousand Sons, which arguably is the legion with the worst gene flaw, but was forced upon them by Tzeench.
Allegedly by Tzeench. Careful, he is very litigious.
The Legion of 40k fans
Emperor's Children
Thousand Sons- would have had to be exterminated. No other gene flaw was close to that dangerous other than maybe the vague Emperor's Children one. But that didn't inflict harm on others, just themselved.
I mean… what do you mean by “worst”?
A general "worst", all things considered. The chance/randomness/frequency of its occurrence, the depth of its effects, its dangers amongst its Legion and others, the difficulty of curing, etc.
Naturally occuring? Chaos born? Or worship caused? Naturally occuring? Emperors Children or Thousand Sons. Both legions were almost destroyed from their innate gene-flaws. Fulgrim worked HARD AF to get his legion up to strength. Magnus dealt with Tzeentch to help his legion. Chaos Born? Thousand Sons or Blood Angels. Tzeentch toyed with Magnus and caused the Flesh change to run wild and silent. Never knowing when it would pop up. And the demons messing with the Blood Angels on Signus Prime caused The Black Rage flaw. Gotta be fucked up to be in a bad battle and suddenly your brother goes ape shit screaming about Horus and shit then starts stabbing EVERYTHING! Worship born? Emperor's Children I think. They are all sick and twisted fucks that would r**e you as soon as kill you, and will probably do both. They can't even help it anymore. At least if the World Eaters attack, I know they will merely slaughter me. I'd rather that then Emperor's Children. Or maybe Deathguard. They are basically all just diseases now. Not even carriers OF diseases. But like, actually just viruses.
>And the demons messing with the Blood Angels on Signus Prime caused The Black Rage flaw. Isn't this the Red Thirst? >Gotta be fucked up to be in a bad battle and suddenly your brother goes ape shit screaming about Horus and shit then starts stabbing EVERYTHING! And this is the Black Rage.
The Angels had the Red Thirst BEFORE Signus Prime. Sanguinius killed those that fell to it himself whenever possible. The Black Rage was born on Signus Prime because the demons exacerbated the Red Thirst and almost killed Sanguinius. This snapped something inside the Blood Angels minds and made the Red Thirst worse, like back when they were called the Revenant. Before they met Sanguinius they were worse than the World Eaters. Sanguinius was 'curing' them, but Signus Prime made the Red Thirst worse. And CAUSED the Black Rage.
Ok, noted. Thanks.
Thousans sons by a landmark. Big e should have obliterated them from the start and took Magnus at his protégé. "Sorry no legion for you - but I will make you the beacon of hope for our race." Second place goes to blood angels. Honorable mentions: space wolves for having nearly the same flaw as thousand sons but with more plot armor and a restriction to doggos.
Emperor could’ve worked on making the grey knight gene-line earlier and had that geneline under Magnus. Letting the thousand sons as a cursed gene line continue on created a massive opening that Tzeentch was able to exploit, Khorne nearly succeeded in exploiting a very similar scenario with Sanguinius’ sons.
Blood Ravens. Poor memory, predilection towards psykery, rampant kleptomania?
Thousand sons was. Now it just makes you a blue feathered bird wizard so… best?
Lamenters. That has to be a gene flaw at this point
Chronically bad luck and clinical depression plus the usual BA shenanigan. Yeah, they got it bad.
As in limitation factor, or uselesness?
Lamenters poor bastards cursed to die horriblely
Goodest bois.
All of them, because none of them Get to be the true necron overlords of the galaxy muahahhhaaa
Yous. It's yours.
Thousand Sons and nothing comes close. Imagine trying to cast Testicular Torsion, and you explode into tentacles, all while being in extreme pain and losing your mind. And then, some asshat wizard binds your already damaged soul to your armor. "I FiXeD iT!" No, Ahriman, you did not. Blood Angels? Oh, you're a little mad and you teamkill? Average World Eaters day. Cry us a river. Of blood. For the Blood God. Emperor's Children? It got fixed by the Fuck God. Raven Guard? There's like, 3 of them. Who cares? Furry Legion? That's not a flaw, that's a fur suit. Terrible. Imperial Fists? *Oh no* , they can't use that obscure ability that nobody really uses. Salamanders? If you think that's a flaw, you're racist. Iron Hands? They aren't wrong, the flesh *is* weak. Death Guard? They *chose* to not shower. That's on them. And Typhus. Mostly Typhus. Alpha Legion? They're fine, they're just faking it. Again. Hydra Stultus or whatever, dumb bastards. Night Lords? Seems pretty stable to me. Must be the *actual* psychopaths they keep turning into Space Marines. Everyone else not mentioned is also fine. Most of their issues are self inflicted. Except for the Ultramarines. They are better than you.
i think a lot of my problems would also be fixed by the fuck god
Death guard Because of the nurgle influence
I was going to say this as well… Being crazy resilient might not seem bad until that exact thing is exploited causing untold suffering forever
TSons Imagine training your entire life to be a Psyker and chaos spawning on your first spell. Meanwhile, a wolf or white scar Psyker can blast lightning out his dick while being extremely safe from warp effect and they generally seem to be happier.
For shiz and giggles, the old run down of gene-seed traits/instability from the Index Astartes. Some of which might be in-universe superstition over actual fact. WORD BEARERS: Tendency to dogged, unquestioning belief. WORLD EATERS: Rumours their gene-seed was corrupt from conception, but no specifics. NIGHT LORDS: Surprisingly pure. Prone to pale skin and dark eyes. Visions as well. ALPHA LEGION: No real info. EMPEROR'S CHILDREN: Apparently the most pure and stable of all the legions (though in later lore, there's some indication that the blight might have been lurking in there all along). THOUSAND SONS: Prone to becoming psyker and mutation. IRON WARRIORS: Tendency toward suspicion and paranoia and highly intelligent. DEATH GUARD: Created gaunt, shadow eyed marines. SONS OF HORUS: Pure. RAVEN GUARD: Unstable. Missing Mucranoid and Betcher's Gland, the Malanchromic organ mutation causes pale skin- their skin becoming whiter and eyes blacker with age. WHITE SCARS: Stable. Suspected to have inherited wild savagery and bloodlust. IRON HANDS: Suspected genetic component to their fear of weakness. SPACE WOLVES: Can turn aspirant into a wolf "monster" or a marine. Some marines are still at risk of becoming a Wulfen even after successful implantation. SALAMANDERS: Stable. Unknown if their lower reflexes are caused by gene-seed. New lore points to their coal skin and red eyes coming from their gene-seed + radiation of the home world. IMPERIAL FISTS: Stable but lost sus-an membrane and Betcher's Gland. A need to scrimshaw bones and punish themselves suspected from the gene-seed. ULTRAMARINES: Pure and stable. DARK ANGELS: Pure. BLOOD ANGELS: Thirst for blood.
Sons. Dad had to do a flesh sacrifice to TEMPORARILY halt the flaw and the next time it came up half got turned into dust bots
The Thousand Sons would randomly mutate into semi-Chaos Spawn. It's hard to get worse than that.
Blood Angels and Thousand Sons. But the thousand sons take the cake for having high rejection rates in addition to a curse.
***TRAITORS*** **Thousand Sons** \- The flesh change was bad enough that the Imperium considered purging them and this was before Magnus rejoined the Legion and psychic power became more prevalent amongst them. **Emperor's Children** \- Literally almost died out due to the blight upon their gene-seed causing them to shrink to but a handful. ***LOYALISTS*** **Blood Angels -** Sanguinius was scared his Legion would be purged for the Red Thirst alone and now they also have the Black Rage to contend with. Some of their Successors are viewed in a very dim light due to their barely controlled savagery. **Space Wolves -** Their gene-seed doesn't allow for them to create Successors and it's only in the more recent times that this has seemed to change.
Word Bearers because they have to associate with Erebus. Fuck Erebus.
Isn’t there that one chapter that just has marines randomly bursts into flames
Loyalist: Blood Angels, absolutely hands-down. Every single Marine has to deal with the Black and the Red? (Side note: my favorite chapter after the Carchs is the Flesh Tearers.) Close second loyalist: Dark Angels paranoia makes them act batshit Third loyalist: Iron Hands. Their obsession with perfection is so unbelievably harmful to them as a chapter.
Thousand sons. I mean you get a boost in psychic power but you might become an eldritch horror at any moment and there is fuck all you can do about it. Blood angels and Space wolves can basically control theirs with good self discipline most of the time.
Thousand Sons or hypothetically the lost legions
Blood angels, definitely. The thousand sons can be attributed to overuse of psychic powers and because of tzeentch fuckery not am existing gene flaw. They did have a high rejection rate, but with psychic powers being integral to the legion genes, I would attribute it to a lack of potential from recruits. The emperors children blight was awful, but it wasn't a gene flaw as it was a poison given to legion by the lunar gene cults, I believe. The space wolves were bad with their geneseed but the canis helix mostly sorted that out. Night lords and salamanders mostly affected aesthetics. Idk if the ravenguards curse of the Raven (whatever they call it, I can't remember tbh) was around during the heresy. Most of the traitors, as far as I remember, had stable geneseed
Nah, the Space Wolves can’t even have successor chapters. They tried. Once. The only ones didn’t turn into Wulfen or just zerk out turned to Chaos. Complete failure. The BA and friends might turn into slavering beasts who think they’re Sanquinius and everyone is a traitor, but they are way more of them around then SW.
They couldn't have successor chapters true because of the lack of a canis helix issue. The current 40k now has SW successors, all of whom aren't dealing with a curse that will eventually wipe out all of the gene line of russ unlike the BA
The Canis Helix still affects ultra-wolves, just give time. Meanwhile there’s three BA in the short story *Bloodline* that have all overcome the Rage - Mephiston, Lemartes, and Rafen, who was unique in that >!he succumb from shooting up Hawkboy’s blood to reclaim it from Bile and was cleansed using the same sarcophagus he was originally transformed in!< Plus Dante has held on for a long time. Is that the salvation of their blood line? No, but the rage *is* controllable by exceptional Astartes. Plus there’s the damn howling, “ ArrooooOooo my pack shall avenge the fallen whelp. Grr.” That’s the worst flaw, give me raging space vampires hellbent on revenge over that any day.
Lemartes hasn't overcome the flaw or the black rage. He's right in the middle of it. I don't remember Rafen falling to thirst or rage, but it's been a while since I read those books. That's still 3 compared to basically every current space wolf as the only members of the chapter who fall for the gene curse are the last stage initiates, the incredibly rare outbreak of a wulfen in the ranks and the entire 13th company who spent 10k years in the warp. 3 to a couple of thousand or however many wolves there have been isn't too bad. The angels' flaws can hit entire companies at a time I think dante swore off blood after he fell to the thirst and killed a couple of kids. It was only recently in the dante book where he drank blood again, most likely why he hasn't felt the effects of the flaw or thirst but is aging rapidly and is tiring more
The Sable Brand was the name of the Raven Guard flaw IIRC
Probably, unfortunately, I only found out about it from lexicanum tbh can't think of anywhere it's mentioned
The flesh change is literally a gene flaw. Even non-psychic members of the thousand sons are victims of the curse. The Blood Angels curses are thanks to the Black Angel, a warp entity native to Baal.
The thousand sons had no members without at least a spark of psychic potential. Its why they were incredibly selective of the aspirants to the legion. One of the prospero tests was to eject the astral form of an aspirant, and they had to travel the planet, this was mentioned in the 8th Ed codex. Simerly magnus, the psychic primarch on the psychic planet wouldn't recruit people with out atleast a spark of power. That's bs for the red flaw. The revenant legion exhibited the red flaw from the beginning of the legions history. it's one of the reasons sanguinius implemented control measures like art and a more disciplined chain of command into his legion in the first place. The black rage has a direct cause of sanguinius death, and the red thirst was proved to be worsened twice by massive damage suffered to sanguinius, knocked unconscious and ultimate death.
> “Not all of the Thousand Sons were gifted with the same potential as sorcerers and mystics. Whether stunted in some sorcerous experiment gone wrong, broken for some transgression against the rules of the Legion or simply afflicted with some defect in their gene-seed, **some were not only incapable of channelling the ethereal but suffered pain at its touch**. These **outcasts** would be granted the most difficult and dangerous of missions, **sent out to find an honourable death in battle rather than linger as something less than a full warrior of the Thousand Sons**.” -*Traitor Legions Astartes Army Book 2nd Edition* The *Eidolon of Suffering* is a warlord trait for a thousand son preator who has 0 ability to utilize psychic powers and is treated as an outcast of a legion as a direct result of it. For all intents and purposes an *Eidolon of Suffering* has 0 ability to overuse psychic powers like you suggested in your first post. > “'The warp is a mirror to the material realm,' said the bloody angel. 'The shape of the warp is the shape of the mortal soul. If it harms us, we only have ourselves to blame. You are strong with the warp. You live. It walked past Mephiston to stand between two of the great sandstone pillars, and looked up at the battling angels. '**These creatures are the reflections of your bloodline. The golden angel is your purity, the black angel is your flaw**.' The bloody angel turned back to Mephiston. 'You are, all of you, of the blood of your father. In the least of you is a residue of his power. Thousands of years of sacrifice, denial and endless war. **Every time one of your brothers creates a work of beauty, or lays down his life for those weaker than he, it strengthens the angel in gold. Each time one succumbs to the flaw and in his madness slays his brothers, the black is made more powerful**.' > The black angel swung at the gold angel's head. Silver blade intercepted black. The heavens rang. ‘**The black is winning**,' said Mephiston. > ‘The Black Rage will one day destroy all those of the Blood. It is inevitable,' said the bloody angel. 'The question is, how those of the Blood choose to spend their days before that happens. As paragons, or as monsters?' He stared at Mephiston with eye lenses of living blood set in a helmet of the same. 'The Great Rift has split the sky. The Emperor stirs. The minds of men are opening. Your madness calls all the louder because of it. Your priests and your tech-magi search fruitlessly for a cure. **The Black Rage is not a malady of the body. It is a flaw in your souls**.'” -*Darkness in Blood* Both angels have existed for millions of years, and have led xeno species that once lived on Baal prior to humanity ever coming to ti.
I'll admit that some thousand sons don't have psychic potential. But that doesn't prove the point you made about the blood angels gene flaw. As I mentioned, the revenant legion had the red thirst before the legion ever went to baal, if the black rage is truly caused by this warp entity and not the death of sanguinius then it would have manifested before his death and not after it. I would like to have the quote where it mentions both angels having existed for millions of years and having led xenos species that lived on baal prior to humanity coming ever going there. Unless you don't have a quote to prove that claim. If the millions of years old statement isn't real, it's entirely possible that like older lore, the two angels are sanguinius soul split into multiple parts. If it is real, then sanguinius' had no impact on the blood angels' soul, which is not true
> “He gestured at a space between two of the outer pillars. **An image appeared there, presenting Mephiston with a vision of spindly xenos, heavily robed and bedecked in bloodstone, labouring to raise monuments long since ground to dust**. > ‘And there, **where millions of years later men lived in brief paradise upon Baal Indicus and Baal Fortunata.** The first men here knew the angels too, but refused to believe they existed, until times changed and they let the black angel in.” -*Darkness in Blood* > “Names come and go. Those names became corrupted in form. **In time, they will be forgotten completely, as will your species. Another race, then another, then another, will come and uncover the things left behind in days long dead**, and wonder what manner of hand shaped them.' The bloody angel turned its attention back to Mephiston. 'Or the universe will fall to Chaos, and yours will be the last of creation's children, and **no more beings will choose their path twixt grace and rage**, but all will be madness, and pandemonium will reign.'” -*Darkness in Blood* Same chapter as the excerpt that I posted before The novel has Mephiston become the host for the Black Angel, as the Sanguinor is the host for the Golden Angel, in order to prevent the Black Angel from destroying the Blood Angels as a gene line. > “'This is different. It is more than just the Chapter's gene-seed. **There is a shadow in him - the same shadow that was in Sanguinius**, but it has been made manifest. He has been born three times and his third birth has made him uniquely potent, uniquely suitable for the Nine Sacraments. I have devised a way to lever his pieces apart - to break him into the stimulus we need.'” -*Zadkiel to Magnus the Red, Mephiston: City of Light* A thousand sons sorcerer suggests to Magnus, that the Black Angel was held within Sanguinius prior to his death. In general the timeline and mechanics are weird, but there is an explicit narrative thread regarding the Black Angel and its connection to the Black Rage in the Mephiston novels.
Thanks for the quotes! Tbh that sounds incredibly stupid as far as lore decisions go. It feels like sanguinius' death gets more and more pointless with each new book that comes out. I don't think I'm gonna read darkness in the blood now, tbf. Dante and devastation were awesome af so this might be a bit of a letdown
2nd legion. If you're not directly observing them, you forget they exist. They're very lonely
Erebus
That's a curse, not a mutation. Although he is like a rancid tumor, so...
SW. They're all fucking furries man. Talk about cursed.
Legions? Not chapters? Gene-flaw? If we talk about genetic this would be Space Wolves, Salamanders, Raven Guard. Too much murations. Psyker curse-flaw=Thousand Sons and Blood Angels. Not genetic one. .... Proto-Emperror Childrens Legion genetic error what made them die was fixed quickly, way before Heresy.
Blood Angels I'm saying because that scrub against perfection! You're beautiful you don't need to lick that blood off your blade Lol 🤦🏻♂️