Primarch Lore: The F.P.S.-0 files.
I wanna info dump about 40k. So I'm posting about obscure Primarch lore and memes thereof. Deal with it.
In today's post, we will discuss less-spoken of lore, theories, and fan stuff involving The Primarch Project broadly. Mostly fan interpretations and their effects on you, the fan.
-Primarch Negative 1, Sigmar Heldenhanmer.
Not actually a Primarch so I'm doing him first before anything else.
Sigmar Heldenhanmer was born to mortal parents in The Old World and his arrival was heralded by a comet leaving a twin-tailed streak in the sky. But he isn't from Warhammer 40k. He's from Warhammer's other universe(s) Warhammer Fantasy (Also called Oldhammer because it was the original line) and Age of Sigmar, the latter being the current incarnation because it's an in-continuity reboot that Sigmar himself created after trading a magical amulet to a god. I don't believe I'm making that up. His world was destroyed in an "end times" scenario and a space-traveling god wanted some jewelry off him so let him remake the planet.
Yeah, so Sigmar isn't a Primarch, though he did found an entire empire with his first life. Like The Emperor of Mankind (Sigmar himself also being called "The God-Emperor) or any of his wayward sons would. So a common meme or sometimes even a fan theory is that Sigmar's home world, Mallus (Which has a lot of continental similarities to Earth) is, in fact, a part of the 40k universe. The Imperium just hasn't reconnected with it yet, or alternatively they did, which is why Sigmar vanished after a while. He was simply declared insane or unfit for purpose and then killed. Making him either Primarch 2 or 11, who we will talk about later. The comet can be seen as his incubation pod crashing into Mallus.
So yeah. Negative One because WHFantasy predates the very concept of Primarchs (Which were not a thing until 3rd edition) inand he's more like the Proto-Emperor, though some of his narrative elements were used later for the Primarchs. Anyway.
-Primarch 0 (Zero), AKA The Angel Of Destruction, The Sleeper, or just The Angel. (Art by AcolyteNaerina)
Originally written about in 2003's "Inquisitor Conspiracies 2- Death Of an angel," PZ as I will call him was an entity the emperor made to help with his conquests. Sadly PZ was not a very good tool. This is how The Emperor sees most of his sons btw. He's not a great person. Not the point of the post tho. The Angel was basically indestructible and when he razed most of a planet, The Emperor had to force him into a deep slumber to render him even able of being executed. Unfortunately this goal was unfulfilled as someone smuggled PZ out of the appropriate channels and layed his immortal slumbering ass to rest on the planet he basically burned the surface of.
That was until a Daemon Prince PZ fought and bested while awake resurfaced. The plot of the DND-ass supplement PZ was in fills in the rest. The Inquisitors (Made up of the players) freed him from his coffin, directed his righteous fury at the Daemon Prince, and then sealed his blue-flame sword-wielding self back in the same coffin again, sealing it hopefully permanently this time as it turned out PZ had gone full genocide against ALL of humanity, believing us to all be fated to fall to the evil forces of Chaos.
Being immune to psychic and physical attacks and being a one-man city taker, PZ and his glorious blue-flaming sword and even more glorious angel wings, paint a picture that a lot of fans have inferred but PZ has never been referenced outside of the DOAA supplement in an official capacity so it is just fan speculation, PZ is "Primarch Zero." An in-universe prototype of The Emperor's other sons.
Albeit the timing doesn't make a a whole lot of sense considering he was used on a planet that WASN'T Terra (Earth) but considering the stuff Emps could have went through before meeting his son's for the first time... Well... It's not entirely impossible to just say the world was closer to Terra than the rest. Again, it must be stressed, PZ may not actually be a Primarch. But so many little things line up that the theory sticks around when people know about him.
-Primarch 2, The Forgotten AKA (Redacted) of The ββββββββ, once called (unknown)
-Primarch 11, The Purged, AKA (Censored) of The (Deleted), once called (Removed)
This is one of the weirder ones for 40k fans who knows it. But these two have SOME record of existence. The Meta reason for them not being around anymore is for fans to make their own interpretations and theories about them, but we can talk about the little bits of lore that hint at what happened to them.
This official 40k art I can't find an artist for depicts the Imperial Palace. Note the statues on tower-esque plinths. Note that some of the plinths are vacant but of the visible ones we see loyalists. Sanguinius, Rogal Dorn, Jaghatai Kahn, and I don't know who's on the far left.
The point is that during the Great Crusade, a campaign spearheaded by The Emperor to find and reunite humanity with the background goal of getting his sons back, scattered as our species was after the great catastrophe of Old Night/The age of strife, two of these plinths were rendered empty. For a reason implied by Sanguinius.
Sanguinius and his legion, The Blood Angels, suffer from a desire most dark and detestable. They crave human blood. If they yield to this temptation too much or don't do it enough, they begin to mutate and start to go full monster about it. Sanguinius has put down some of his own sons because after a point it's the only way to stop them. He confessed this truth to one of his brothers, Horus, and then reflected on the idea that he did not want a third plinth rendered empty for reasons beyond his or his sons control. This implies that that at least one of them fell to mutations or psychopathic instincts.
It's also implied that Leman Russ, Primarch of the Space Wolves, killed these two brothers. Or at least one of them as, when sent after Magnus The Red, he mentioned not wanting to kill one of his brothers "again." It's some very interesting stuff.
However GW left a lot of the specific details of who these guys are and what they actually did up to speculation and some of the details don't always make sense. Like Roboute Guilliman suggesting they "Failed," in a conversation with a high lord of Terra.
The Meta reason back when Primarchs became established as a lore point is so people could paint up their Marines however they wanted but now, given how many chapters there are, the fact that some don't know their true parentage, Gene-seed can be Chimeric in nature, etc. you don't even need to use the Lost Primarchs for that. But you can.
That's all I feel vomiting onto this website. Y'all have a good one. Glory be to the Emperor and his sons, remembered, true, or otherwise.
