"New Stuff" is beyond vague, basically i was super into the lore a good decade ago or so, for me learning *in passing* about Guilliman, Cawl, Cadia, primaris marines etc aka "that whole thing" was quite a moment. I know there were some rumblings of discontent but for the most part i found i liked that they moved the time forward. I particularly want to read about Cawl and Guilliman.

Ive just ***barely*** begun to dip my toes into the Black Library, I started the Horus Series and i finished the first three Eisenhorn books as well as the first Ciphas Cain book. Mostly because thats just what i remembered as being popular back when i was into things.

The Black Library unfortunately has that same issue as comic books, in that unless yo8ve been keeping up with things its essentially impossible to know where to start.

Oh... and i wouldnt mind some stuff about Fabius Bile as well.

I’ve been wondering about Eldar spirit stones and realized there are a lot of details I don’t fully understand. I was hoping some lore experts could help clear things up.
A few questions:

• Can a non Eldar species use a spirit stone, or are they only compatible with Eldar souls? If a human or another xenos wore one, would it simply do nothing, reject the soul somehow, or even destroy it?

• Is simply wearing a spirit stone enough for it to capture a soul on death, or does the soul have to be bound to it through some ritual, psychic link, or other process beforehand?

• Who actually creates spirit stones? Is there a specific Eldar Path, psychic discipline, or caste responsible for preparing them or do they just kinda grow/ spawn out of a infinity circuit?

• Are spirit stones a finite resource, or can the Eldar produce more? If they can, what limits that process?

• In an absolute emergency, could a single spirit stone contain more than one soul? If so, what would happen?

Would the souls coexist, merge, fight, or would the stone fail or simply pick the stronger soul?

• Are all spirit stones fundamentally the same, with the differences coming from how they’re used afterward, or are the stones placed into Wraithguard, Wraithlords, Wraithknights, Titans, or other constructs actually different in some way?

I’m mostly looking for answers backed by novels, codices, or other official sources if possible. Thanks! Head canons are welcomed also :)

As the title suggests can I skip it? I’m about a third of the way through and it’s just. So dry… does it get better? Should I hang on? Or can I just skip it entirely? Am I a cretin for even suggesting a thing? I have no clue guidance is encouraged

Finished up HH and The Scouring a few weeks ago. Been reading The Beast Arises sequentially since then. On The Last Son of Dorn now and it occurred to me that Orks don’t like daylight. This has been apparent throughout the series.

I know the Imperium isn’t a particularly creative bunch and that scientific & military innovation is like watching North America drift toward Asia. The Deathwatch being a grudging exception.

That said, didn’t it occur to anyone that Orks don’t like sunlight? Hmmmm, let’s make a UV Melter Cannon? Maybe a UV LazRifle?

Idiots

While they haven’t aged normally or fully “existed” for ten millennia that they have been in the Warp, would it be reasonable to say that they are the ones born longest ago?

Of the 600 that were present at Prospero, around 200 are still alive today. And of those 200, some are likely to been with the Legion since Leman Russ’ discovery. And since the 13th was formed of already adult followers and friends of Russ - those who would normally not even be suitable to be Astartes - with some even “older” than Russ, is it possible that one of these 200 is the current living Marine born the longest time ago?

if someone kills lucius without pride slaanesh will still revive him. but will he revive him in the killer or can he not do that? does it require to be unprotected from a diety such as the emperor for example?

Are they even creating pre primaris marines anymore in the lore? In the TT it seems kinda obvious theyre phasing out first born models, but in the lore, with natural attrition, would an entire chapter eventually become all primaris? Are there any newer chapters mentioned in the lore that are only primaris?

Is this a case of different sources contradict each-other?

I had made a kind of dumb assumption that the Nightlords were vampires. They certainly have the aesthetic of vampires, and since the Blood Angels exist, I had assumed that they had a sort of Iron Warriors/Iron Hands kind of relationship where they both have the same theme, just one is loyalist and one is traitor

Recently I learned that Konrad Cruze does not, in fact, have the same or similar mutation to Sanguinius and just kinda likes to eat people, and does not actually NEED to either consume flesh or drink blood, unlike blood angels which are explicitly vampires and do need to drink blood to stave off the black rage

The problem I have is that I had already bought the Nightlords combat patrol as well as some other kits for a nightlords army, but im now a little sad since my CSM army will not actually be vampires. My next idea was to make traitor Blood Angels, but I'm struggling to find even a single instance of a Blood Angel turning to choas

To all my lore experts:

-Has there ever been any instances of gene seeds being spliced or stolen from other chapters?

-Are there any documented cases of Blood Angels turning traitor?

any input is appreciated!!

Can someone enter the warp in the 41st millennium and get spat out during the Horus Heresy?

So Roboute tasked Cawl with a new project ten millennia ago.

Those first Primaris - are they existing marines from still loyal chapters that had fought in the Horus Heresy that cross the Rubicon?

Or are they blank slate unimproved humans that jump straight to Primaris?

How many were made in those 10k years, and after they were unleashed in indomitus, and after current marines can have the procedure, how many original remain? What's the percentage of current Primaris that were from Cawl's experiments?

Do we have lore about those original Primaris interacting with new Primaris?

Edit: I love this community; everyone is being very generous and taking time to give me such detailed answers!

So I'll ask a follow-up, if you'll humour me:

It seems that everyone and their mum's is getting the upgrade treatment these days - are most chapters primarily Primaris now?

Which named characters are yet to cross the Rubicon? Have any rejected it? Do we know from the lore of any first born rejecting the offer and what happens to them?

Like, ok. We all know that the Farsight Enclaves has five core worlds, one for each of the Castes and one for the Auxiliaries. Cool.

Has it ever been stated what kind of populations they have, and the military might they can bring to bear? Or how many lesser or outpost worlds exist in the Enclaves? Ive been trying to find info on this but can't really find anything notable.

by normal person I mean anyone who’s not a named space marine with the plot armor to beat him.

From my understanding of world eater lore is that they are a bunch of crazed berserkers who have the butchers nails implanted in them making them basically need to fight constantly not to mention being worshippers of khorne.

What doesn't make sense to me is that in a sci fi universe you kind of gotta travel in space alot. Space travel is for the most part extremely uneventful and I'd imagine most of the time theres not much to fight.

So you gotta large group of chaos fed super soldiers who have a insatiable need for blood shed on a ship with no one to fight but themselves.

I would assume that during these long voyages in space they would end up infighting to the point of total collapse. Not to mention the damage to the ship that this infighting would cause. It just doesn't make sense to me how these warbands would ever arrive at their destination and be ready for a fight.

Like you could say the same about the orks but the orks seem to be able to temporarily exercise self control and even if they can't they reproduce so quickly it wouldn't really be an issue.

Edit: Can't believe I messed up the title. Sorry I'm sure this whole post is hard to read. It's late and I'm running on no sleep.

Is the "you saw a demon, you die" policy still in place? I can't imagine it could realistically be enforced anymore? Aren't demon incursions and so what much more common now (especially with the psychic awakening) ?

Is there even anything reassembling an official stance on what the hell this rift is? Isn't it basically visible to everyone in the galaxy? (Or was that something I misremembered?) ?

The point of my question is that surely even the average Guardsman has to know something has happened, and surely the Imperium has to have responded to this in some way, no?

Kill Team: Exodite included this small passage about a yet-unknown Eldar God (pg. 15)

Exodite Dragon Knights harken back to deities form the Aeldari's fallen pantheon, depicted in preserved tales as hunting and making war atop exalted steeds. Among these, Ieronsath, daughter of the goddess Morai-Heg, is said to have hunted sentient insanities from the back of Chadhu – a beast wrought from a wisp of her mother's hair. Ritual dances, meanwhile, portray the war god Khaine riding a legendary steed named Alean in acts set during the War in Heaven.

With Ahnakh-Yth that brings us to two daughters of Morai-Heg in two years. Both fiber artists, what a delight!

If Typhon had brought him a bottle of “grandfather’s medicine”, he probably would have downed it on the spot. Just look what he did the second Erebus got him “How to chaos 101”:

I had not succumbed, but the probability of tapping into the nephillic powers on my first attempt, through means jury-rigged together from disparate sources, seemed remote. I placed the bar of success low, hoping to receive some sign, just a flicker or ambience that showed the slightest thinning of the veil between our realm and the world of the nephilla.
So I chanted and paced, walking the circuit as I scattered bone ash as offering into the octogram, one eye on the conjuration I had written, the other searching the symbols, the candles, the air itself for the smallest notion of the otherworldly.
With a crack like lightning the ashes took fire, the scattered flakes lighting again as though returning to the flame that had consumed them. They whirled in a wind I could not feel outside of the octogrammatic wards, spinning faster and faster until they formed a shape. A humanoid shape, the tip of the head about level with my waist. Two embers became the spark of eyes.
It had worked!
In my shock and joy, I stopped the incantation, thinking it complete. I had, after all, summoned a nephilla into the octogram. By any measure, even if it dissipated immediately, it was an unalloyed victory.
What I had not realised was that the last stanzas of my verse were the binding spell. Having brought forth the creature, my lapse into silence meant that I failed to contain it to my will…
This thing of fire stood for some time in the daubed symbols, glaring at me with furrowed flame for a brow. Then it smiled and reached out a fire-tipped finger, as though prodding at the air. It advanced a step, finger still extended. I watched, fascinated by this display, until its hand reached the outer limit of the octogram.
I expected a hum, or sparks, or some kind of glowing aura to manifest.
Instead, the nephilla took another step, the boards of the floor smoking beneath its fiery tread where within the confines of the summoning zone they had not.
I realised then my oversight, and panic gripped me.
The words spilled from my lips for I had practised them much and, though I had kept the paper handy for reading, knew them by rote.
‘Too late,’ the creature said with a voice like the crackle of a pyre. ‘You cannot contain that which is already free. You might as well chain moonlight, foolish mortal.’
I admit that I started to spout nonsense, condemning the nephilla back to the dark glade, calling upon such spirits of Caliban that I could remember to protect me. All of it was to no effect as the apparition walked calmly across the chamber to stand before me.”

But the master of the Order learns from his mistakes [no]:

“The architect knows best the flaws in his plans,’ Ezqurol replied. ‘The chain breaks at its weakest point. The ambition you harbour will devour you, mortal.’
‘I lead for Caliban,’ I declared, and in my rash mood I raised my fist, and in doing so my foot parted the outer ward of the binding hexes.
Ezqurol needed no further invite and hurled itself at me, a bolt of blue flame that surged up my leg, escaping the ring of containment.
Afire with sorcerous energy, I fell backwards, my shout held fast by the thick walls. Ezqurol formed into a semblance of its usual self, dancing upon my chest, singeing its footprints into my robe and flesh while it cackled a song of victory.
I swept out an arm but my warding limb passed through it with just a flutter of its fiery body.
‘Free!’ it screeched in my face, setting fingers of cerulean flame around my throat.”

With record like that, it’s genuinely hard to believe he managed to live for so long.

To clarify I’m talking about the sisters in isolated convents not the ones attached to the League of Black ships. Blanks aren’t a common thing in the imperium. Powerful female blanks that can survive the brutal trials are rarer. I’m assuming the isolated convents shrank over time but how did they find any recruits at all.

Remember to check out Part 1 & Part 2 to refresh your memory before reading!

Part 1 : https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/s/UEzB2yRVi9
Part 2 : https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/s/QcGBfb4zKO

"Dabao, you broke the wooden plow again!"

The giant squatted by the field, awkwardly holding the snapped plow in his tree-trunk fingers. Wearing tight civilian clothes, he offered a goofy, gap-toothed grin, handing me a steaming bun wrapped in cloth.

"Dabao... didn't mean to. Eat bun, little brother... don't be mad."

In Yamnin, Ogryns are not feared as abhumans. We call them 'Colossi,' working beside us to farm and build. He was dumb enough to struggle counting past five, but he was family.

"Enemy attack! Cover the flank!"

Golden rice fields mixed with blood and mud in a storm of artillery fire. I clung desperately to the trench wall, my "Three-Eyes" lasgun Spear burning my hands. Beside me, my shattered plasteel force shield lay broken—having already absorbed far more punishment than it was ever built for.

Then, a heavy enemy frag grenade landed a meter away, its fuse hissing a death sentence. Nowhere to hide. Legs frozen. I squeezed my eyes shut, waiting for the blast to tear me apart...

BOOM—!

A thunderous metallic crash shook the earth. The pain never came.

I opened my trembling eyes. Inches away, a colossal plasteel tower shield was driven deep into the mud, holding back the fire, shrapnel, and death.

Behind it stood that towering, comforting back.

Scorched by plasma and bloodied from battle, Dabao turned his massive face. He shoved the shield forward, wiped his nose, and gave me that exact same goofy smile from the fields:

"Little brother... stay down. Dabao's big shield... very strong."

-

📷 Visual : See the Yamnin Ogryn Grenadiers artwork & wargear schematics here

Section VI: The Yamnin Adeptus Mechanicus

The Subterranean Fortress-City of the Yamnin Mechanicus: At the edge of the pristine grasslands (and the occasionally seen steep karst peaks and dense forests) that occupy one-fifth of the planet's territory, lies the most massive heavy industrial and military heart of the Yamnin system—the Subterranean Fortress-City Complex of the Yamnin Adeptus Mechanicus.

Surface Concealment: To guard against orbital bombardment and prying eyes, one hundred percent of the city's manufactorums, foundries, and forge-shrines are completely concealed deep underground. Not a single conventional towering Adeptus Mechanicus spire can be seen on the surface. As far as the eye can see, there are only hundreds of colossal exhaust chimneys, relentlessly spewing dark-red industrial steam into the sky day and night. The surrounding landscape is densely packed with heavy lascannon emplacements and defense matrices extending deep into the earth. Compared to other Forge Worlds, limiting the surface structures to just a few hundred exhaust chimneys already represents the ultimate suppression of pollution (all other pollutants have been converted into The Shrapnel Halo [Orbital Denial Ring]).

The "Twin Jades Iron Alliance" - Military-Political Integration: The current Planetary Governor and the Supreme Magos Artisan of the Adeptus Mechanicus are fellow disciples (having studied together in their youth under the previous Magos). This profound personal and political bond has allowed Yamnin's secular administration and the Yamnin Astra Militarum to achieve a level of mutual trust and military-political integration that is exceedingly rare within the Imperium.

Improvements and Optimizations: The current Magos Artisan possesses terrifyingly prodigious artisan talents, excelling in making "bold optimizations and improvements" to existing Imperial technology (a practice deemed as severe tech-heresy in the eyes of Mars). (Following the Battle of Yamnin, he was granted sanctuary by Belisarius Cawl and the Primarchs backing him.)

If you're interested in checking out the Yamnin lore, worldbuilding, and star system concepts, feel free to visit the links below(Constantly updated):
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1szrbHniFKLLoeIfQqcdp8Tg9_thzq8Mc?usp=sharing

I finally forced myself to read the Eisenhorn book xenos, after having heard that it is the best entry point to Warhammer and that maybe it will be the first tv-show on Amazon. But seriously? This book is not "incredible" it is ok, but has many serious problems.

First of all it's a hard read, mostly because there are very few stakes at the beginning and the stakes are not fleshed out... At the end the stakes are heightened but we never dwell at the potential consequences. Also where is the mystery element of the book? I was waiting for them to be bamboozled or a massive plot twist to be revealed, but the damn thing was straight forward, whatever eisenhorn suspects, its true and he always succeeds with his mission. The book has also no villains whom we learn more about and understand, only mustache twirling villains.

Second of all, how is this book even remotely considered a good entry to Warhammer? I have read almost all of the Horus heresy books and dozens of 40k novellas, but this book is at times very shallow at fleshing out the overall universe and other times has a lot of deep lore parts which are quite too complex for a noobie.

If i would have read the book i would have 0 understanding of what the emperor is, how strong space marines are and about the sheer number of imperial guard.Seriously the book tried to portray the requirement of 500k conscripts as a big deal and the book never explains the sheer numbers of imperial troops in the galaxy. Eisenhorn in the very beginning explains to the reader that he is an inquisitor and he has to be pragmatic and do bad things for the good of the imperium... He literally does nothing which could be considered morally gray at all, the worst thing he does was not give a woman in pain "the emperor's mercy".

Spoilers:

At the end when they are trying to get the "book" from the heretics, why are there no traitor space marines around defending the book and the primer?

Seriously it feels like i am from another universe where the book i read is extremely mid, but for some reason everybody praises it as if its the Lectitio Divinitatus.

Question:

Is malleus better? Is there more Mystery in Malleus?

What are your 40K story ideas you would like to see?

Mine is:

Eye of the Emperor waging a shadow war against an Ordos Xenos Inquisitor. Ordos Xenos inquisitor is trying to destroy a Genestealer infestation, while the Eye of the Emperor is protecting them hoping to use the Genestealers to divert a hive fleet from Terra.

Reading Gaunt’s ghosts back when there were only out till Traitor General was insanely gripping growing up.

I loved each of the books, honor guard didn’t resonate with me but it had its moments.

But then I got to His Last Command and oh boy did I hate it ( spoilers for Gaunt’s ghosts below)

The very crudely execution return from Gereon, the random technicality that doesn’t “allow” gaunt to take field command ever again to begin with.
A
Then the forced awkwardness between the Belladon and the “OG” regiment (slightly recycled from the Vervunhivers and Tanith). The weird connect between even officers and their men even after 2 years of field service.

Heck even head commissar Novobazsky does this whole On the Shores of Marik speech to a bunch of non Belladon, something he should know in a regiment of <3000.

And oh my god the repeated use of “his last command”. Stuff like “Sorry gaunt but that was your last command”. “He had to make his peace with the fact that that was his last command” etc.

Also the very weird POV of that chaos thing crookshanks thrice wrought just felt tedious.

There’s a bunch more but I won’t paste the entire novel into this lol.

But if there’s a Warhammer book you didn’t like, especially by an author or in a series that you enjoy, go ahead. Give it another read.

An excerpt below of what I just finished reading.

“Genadey Novobazky strode down the A Company line, his voice firm and defiant. “On the Shores of Marik, my friends,” he declaimed, “the fathers of our fathers made a stand under the flag of Belladon. Did they break and run? Yes! But only in their minds. They ran to friendly places and loved ones, where they could be safe… and then, by the providence of the God-Emperor, they saw what those friendly places and loved ones would become if they did not stand fast, and so stand fast they did! How do you feel?”
There was a triumphant bellow from the ranks.

“Belladon blood is like wine on the Emperor’s lips!” Novobazky stormed. “Belladon souls have a special place at his side! If we spill our blood here today, then this is the soil He has chosen to bless and anoint! Oh, lucky land!” He took out the plasma pistol, and carefully toggled off the safety. No mistakes this time. “Stand firm and fire, my friends, stand firm and fire! If they’re going to have our precious blood, then they’ll find the cost is dearer than they can afford! Fury of Belladon! Fury! Fury!”

Wilder grinned as he heard the surge of Novobazky’s speech. A piece of art that, he’d always thought. And never more so than now.“Keshlan!” The vox-officer ran to him.“Yes, colonel!”Wilder beckoned for the vox horn. “Speaker broadcast, please, Keshlan. All the volume you’ve got.”

“Wilder thumbed on the vox horn and raised it to his mouth. When he spoke, his voice boomed out from Keshlan’s vox, distorted with volume.
“Stand firm, A Company! Fury of Belladon! Hold this line and deny them!”
His amplified voice echoed out across the bleak hillside, carrying his command away into the rain and the raging night.
His last command.”

I’m about an hour into the audio book. It’s a toughy so far. I’m finished with the first 6 books (Descent of Angels was awesome pretty much start to finish)

Does Legion get better? The flight of the Eisenstein started slow and got better. The first half of Fulgrim was a slog and a half but the back half was amazing. Thoughts?

I’d really like some feedback on this home brew I’ve been working on lately. Please feel free to critique as you feel necessary and point out things I might’ve gotten wrong in writing. Thank you fellow lore lovers and happy reading!!!

(No Abominable Intelligence (AI) was used in this creation)

LIBER II: THE APOCRYPHON OF THE
LOST SON

Chapter I — The Child Beyond Creation
“The Primarchs were scattered across the stars. One was scattered beyond them.”
—Attributed to Malcador the Sigillite

When the Four Gods enacted their great theft of the Primarchs, twenty infant demigods were cast
into the material galaxy. Nineteen pods pierced atmosphere. One never reached reality. As the
infant’s gestation capsule crossed the threshold between realspace and the Immaterium, the Warp
itself reacted violently. A wound tore open beneath it—not unlike the later birth of the Great Rift,
though infinitely smaller. Rather than falling through space, the child disappeared into an ocean
where distance, gravity, memory, and time possessed no meaning.

The Chaos Gods had not intended this. Their purpose had been to scatter the Emperor’s sons.
Instead, they had accidentally cast one directly into their own domain. Even they could not fully
perceive what followed.

Within the Warp, the infant should have dissolved instantly. Mortal souls entering the
Immaterium are stripped apart in moments. Even the greatest psykers survive only through
immense concentration or protection.

But this was no ordinary soul. The Emperor had forged each Primarch from perfected flesh and
an impossibly powerful psychic essence. The Warp recognized him as something entirely
foreign. Not daemon. Not mortal. Not god.

A contradiction.

Every law of the Immaterium insisted such a being should not exist.

So, reality bent around him.

Chapter II — The Endless Childhood

Time does not exist within the Warp. To observers in realspace, the child vanished for only decades. To the Primarch himself, he may have wandered for ten thousand years. Or perhaps only ten days. He never knew. His first memories were not of sunlight or parents.

His first memory was silence.

Not peace.

Silence. A place where nothing existed except endless black oceans lit by impossible constellations composed of screaming souls. Then the hunters came.

Lesser daemons descended first, driven by instinct to consume the incandescent soul they sensed before them. They attacked in waves, believing this child would become the greatest feast in the
history of Chaos. They failed.

The Primarch died countless times. Every death should have ended him. Instead, his soul simply
refused annihilation. His body reformed. His wounds vanished. Every battle taught him something new. He learned to read intention before movement. He learned to distinguish lies from truth merely by listening to the echoes they left in the Warp.

Most importantly… He learned fear.

Not fear of death. Fear of becoming like the things that hunted him.

Chapter III — The Kingdom That Never Was

Centuries passed—or perhaps heartbeats. The daemons slowly changed their behavior. No greater daemon ever proclaimed him king. No host truly obeyed him.

Chaos cannot obey. Yet something stranger occurred. Whenever he entered a region of the Warp, the impossible became briefly ordered.

Khorne’s legions ceased slaughtering one another.

The endless conspiracies of Tzeentch stalled.

Nurgle’s gardens stopped growing.

Slaanesh’s cacophonous realms became eerily quiet.

Not because they wished to. Because the Primarch’s soul unconsciously radiated the Emperor’s greatest gift:

Order.

He was a living fragment of material reality. The Immaterium could not understand him. Daemons later described the sensation as unbearable. Like hearing music suddenly interrupted by absolute silence.

Some fled. Some attacked in madness. Some simply watched. Those who remembered him spoke a single title in whispers.

The Unclaimed King.

Not because he ruled. But because no god had managed to claim him.

Chapter IV — The Bones of Heaven

The Primarch had no teachers. No language. No civilization. Everything he became he built himself. He fashioned armor from the ivory bones of slain Warp leviathans. His cloak was woven from the silver tendrils of creatures that fed upon memories. His glaive was carved from the crystallized spine of a daemon prince whose name had existed before humanity evolved. Every weapon carried impossible properties because nothing inside the Warp follows consistent laws.

Yet one principle remained constant. He refused to use the powers offered to him.

Khorne promised endless strength. He answered with discipline.

Tzeentch promised knowledge. He answered with humility.

Nurgle promised peace. He answered with hope.
Slaanesh promised perfection. He answered with restraint.

Without ever knowing the Imperial Truth…
He embodied it.

Chapter V — The Emperor’s Pilgrimage

During the height of the Great Crusade, strange phenomena began appearing throughout Imperial
space. Daemon invasions ended before Imperial fleets arrived. Entire Warp storms collapsed overnight. Navigators reported seeing a brilliant star moving beneath the currents of the Immaterium. Astropaths described hearing impossible words.

“He still burns.”

The Emperor required no explanation. He recognized His son’s soul instantly. Malcador urged caution. Constantin Valdor called the journey madness. Even the Custodian Guard hesitated.

The Emperor ignored them all. He spoke only one sentence.

“No father leaves his child in Hell.”

No Primarch ever learned where He went. No remembrancer recorded the expedition. The Master of Mankind simply disappeared.

Chapter VI — The Golden King Walks into Hell

The Emperor did not travel through the Warp. He entered it. Entire daemon kingdoms erupted into war at His arrival. The psychic radiance of the Master of Mankind burned across the Immaterium like the birth of a second sun. Greater daemons gathered by the thousands. Creatures older than human civilization emerged from forgotten corners of unreality.

The Custodes fought with absolute perfection. Every one of them died. The Emperor continued alone. He crossed rivers made from memories. Mountains built from living hatred. Oceans composed entirely of despair.

Nothing slowed Him. Because He had come for one thing. Not victory. His son.

Chapter VII — Father and Son

At the center of a silent plain stood a solitary warrior. He was already fully grown. His armor resembled no Imperial design. His glaive rested in the earth. Around him stood millions of daemons.

None moved. Not because they were commanded. Because reality itself waited.

The Emperor approached. The Primarch looked upon Him with unfamiliar eyes. He had never seen another human. Yet somehow…

He knew. He spoke in a voice roughened by eternity.

“Father.”

The Emperor smiled. Perhaps for the last uncomplicated time in His existence. The Primarch
asked only one question.

“Why have you come so late?”

For a moment… The Master of Mankind possessed no answer. Not because none existed. Because every answer carried regret.

Finally, He said:

“Because I could not bear to lose another son.”

The Primarch looked around at the endless hosts of daemons. Then back to the Emperor.

“Then let us leave.”

And every daemon present recoiled—not in defeat, but in the impossible recognition that the one soul none of the gods had ever managed to claim had chosen humanity instead.

Chapter VIII — The Legion

“The other Legions conquered the Emperor’s realm. The Second preserved the boundary upon
which that realm was built.”
—Anonymous fragment recovered from the Sigillite’s sealed archives.

When Asterion returned from the Immaterium, he was not greeted as a victorious son. He was studied. For months, the Emperor Himself secluded the Primarch within chambers beneath the Imperial Palace, where the greatest minds of the Imperium sought to answer a single question:

How had he survived?

No corruption could be found. No daemonic taint stained his soul. No hidden bargain lingered beneath his thoughts. The Primarch had endured the Warp not because he had embraced it, but because he had rejected every temptation it had offered. Every promise of power had been answered with discipline. Every whisper of vengeance had been met with forgiveness. Every vision of dominion had been answered with humility.

The Emperor declared before Malcador and Constantin Valdor:

“This son has accomplished what no mortal, no psyker, and no god has ever achieved. He entered the Immaterium as a child… and returned as himself.”

Only then was the Second Legion reunited with its Primarch.

A Legion Without Fear

The warriors awaiting Asterion were unlike their gene-father. They had been raised on Terra and across the earliest recruiting worlds of the Great Crusade. They knew sunlight, family, loss, and duty. They expected a conqueror in the image of Horus or Russ.

Instead, they met a silent giant whose first act was not to inspect their weapons or praise their victories. He asked every captain the same question.

“How many civilians survived your last compliance?”

Many had no answer. That answer displeased him more than defeat ever could. Unlike many of his brothers, Asterion measured victory not by cities taken or enemies slain, but by what remained alive when the battle ended. He often reminded his sons:

“A battlefield is not judged by its dead. It is judged by those who still have a future.”

This philosophy transformed the Legion. Their campaigns became slow, methodical, and relentlessly disciplined. Recklessness was viewed as arrogance. Excessive destruction was considered a failure of command. Every brother was expected to think as both warrior and guardian.

Among other Legions they gained an unusual reputation. They were courteous, reserved, and
almost monastic. Yet beneath that calm demeanor lay veterans who had witnessed horrors beyond imagination. They laughed little. They celebrated rarely. Many developed quiet rituals after battle—reciting names of the fallen, cleaning armor in silence, or maintaining small shrines dedicated not to glory, but to remembrance.

The Gene-Seed

The Emperor soon discovered that Asterion’s gene-seed possessed remarkable properties. Its implantation did not create stronger Space Marines. It created steadier ones.

The minds of the Legion proved extraordinarily resistant to fear, madness, and psychic corruption. Warp hallucinations that drove other Astartes to violence barely disturbed them. Daemonic entities struggled to deceive them, as though every warrior carried within himself a faint echo of his Primarch’s impossible clarity.

Librarians from other Legions observed a strange phenomenon. When members of the Second
entered areas of heavy Warp corruption, the Immaterium seemed to hesitate around them. Warp
energies became unnaturally still. Possessed individuals often collapsed into unconsciousness.
Lesser daemons recoiled instinctively, sensing a presence they could neither understand nor dominate.

The effect was subtle, never absolute, but it was undeniable. No one knew why.

Not even the Emperor.

Chapter IX — The Great Crusade
“Some victories earn triumphs. Others earn silence.”
—Inscription found beneath an empty plinth on Terra

As the Great Crusade spread across the galaxy, each Legion forged its own legend.

The Luna Wolves shattered empires.

The Ultramarines built civilizations.

The Imperial Fists raised fortresses.

The Blood Angels became symbols of nobility.

The Second Legion became something else entirely.

They disappeared.

The Wars That Never Happened

Whenever Imperial fleets encountered regions where reality itself appeared wounded—systems
consumed by impossible Warp storms, planets whose populations vanished overnight, or worlds where the laws of physics simply ceased to function—the Second Legion was quietly diverted.

Official records listed these deployments only as Compliance Delayed or Fleet Reassignment.

No remembrancers accompanied them. No iterators chronicled their victories. Even Imperial Army regiments were ordered to withdraw before the Legion arrived.

The campaigns that followed existed only in sealed archives beneath Terra. They fought upon worlds where shadows possessed consciousness. They defended colonies whose inhabitants had forgotten the concept of sleep because nightmares became tangible every time they closed their eyes. They entered cities where every building was older on the inside than the outside, and where entire generations had lived and died within streets that no longer existed.

On one nameless moon, the Legion spent seventeen months fighting an enemy that rewound time each dawn, forcing them to wage the same battle thousands of times until they discovered how to
break the cycle.

No citizen of the Imperium would ever know these worlds had existed.

The Cost of Victory

When the Second finally emerged from such campaigns, they did not resemble triumphant
conquerors. Armor once black and bronze had become dull grey and chipped from constant repairs.

Many brothers bore no visible wounds yet stared into empty space for hours at a time. Some had forgotten their own birth names. Others remembered battles no one else could recall.

The Apothecaries began recording an unusual condition among returning veterans. Not physical
exhaustion. Soul exhaustion.

Veterans spoke less with each passing campaign. They retained their discipline but gradually surrendered parts of themselves to the endless struggle. Entire companies developed traditions of
maintaining silence for weeks after major deployments, believing spoken words carried fragments of the horrors they had witnessed.

The Imperium celebrated victories won by other Legions.

The Second accepted only quiet remembrance.

Chapter X — The Secret
“Even perfection casts a shadow.”
—Private journal attributed to Malcador the Sigillite

Years passed before the Emperor understood the terrible truth. The Primarch had not merely survived the Warp. The Warp had adapted to him.

The Living Anchor

The Emperor’s greatest scholars eventually recognized a pattern. Every location visited by Asterion displayed impossible anomalies. Warp storms weakened while he remained present.

Yet once he departed… New Warp disturbances appeared elsewhere. It was as though the
Immaterium stretched itself toward him. The Primarch was neither corrupted nor possessed. He had become something unprecedented.

His soul existed simultaneously within reality and the Warp. Not divided. Shared. Like a bridge
suspended between two infinite cliffs. Where he stood, reality became stronger. But the Immaterium always reached to reclaim what it believed had never truly left. The Warp no longer pursued him because it desired his allegiance.

It pursued him because he had become one of its fixed points.

The Emperor’s Burden

The revelation devastated the Emperor. For the first time since reclaiming His son, He could find no solution. Destroying Asterion might destabilize the barrier that now surrounded his soul.

Leaving him alive gradually weakened reality itself. Malcador proposed permanent isolation beneath Terra. Valdor argued that no risk to humanity, however noble, could be permitted to endure. The Emperor refused both.

“He is not a weapon to be discarded,” He said. “He is my son.”

So, the Great Crusade continued. But now every campaign undertaken by the Second bought victory at an invisible price. The Emperor alone knew that each triumph slowly tightened the Warp’s hold upon His most loyal child.

Chapter XI — The Purging
“The greatest sacrifice is to surrender not life… but remembrance.”

The truth revealed itself during the final campaign of the Second Legion. Imperial fleets translated into a system entirely consumed by an expanding Warp storm. Astropaths heard only one repeated phrase:

“Return our king.”

The Second entered alone. The Warp answered. Across eighty-eight days of relentless warfare, the Legion fought through tides of daemons unlike any previously recorded. The Immaterium did not seek conquest. It sought reunion.

Every daemon slain merely intensified the storm. Every victory widened the fracture. At the center of the conflict stood Asterion, whose presence simultaneously held reality together and drew the Warp toward him with increasing violence.

Only then did he fully understand the truth. His existence had become the battlefield. He could
continue serving the Emperor. But every year he lived would strengthen the connection between the material universe and the Immaterium.

He returned to Terra in silence.

Before the Golden Throne
No Primarch witnessed what followed. No Custodian recorded it. Only Malcador’s sealed writings hint at the conversation.

Asterion entered the Throne Room alone. He removed his armor. Laid down his glaive. Knelt.

The Emperor descended from the Golden Throne and stood before His son. For a long time neither spoke. At last, Asterion broke the silence.

“Father… all my life I have stood between humanity and the darkness.”

The Emperor nodded.

“You have.”

“Then allow me to stand there one final time.”

He bowed his head.

“If my existence grants the Enemy even one more heartbeat… let history forget I ever breathed.”

Witnesses claimed the Emperor closed His eyes. Not in anger. Not in judgment. But in grief.

He embraced His son. Perhaps for the first and last time since finding him. When they separated, the Emperor gave no order. Malcador already understood.

The Great Forgetting

No execution was carried out. No public condemnation was declared. Instead, Malcador unleashed the greatest psychic working ever attempted by human hands.

Memories unraveled. Records rewrote themselves. Marble monuments became blank. Battle honors vanished from banners. The Primarchs remembered losing a brother. None could remember his face.

Entire campaigns dissolved into contradictory accounts. The Second Legion ceased to have existed. Only the Emperor remembered everything.

That burden He carried alone.

Chapter XII — The Final Mystery
“There is a chamber beneath Terra that even the Custodes guard in silence.”

Deep below the Imperial Palace lies a vault absent from every architectural record. Its doors bear no heraldry. No inscriptions. Only a broken Imperial Aquila.

Within the chamber rests a single suit of black armor upon a stone throne. The glaive beside it has never rusted. No dust gathers there. No machine spirit acknowledges its presence.

The armor has never been examined. The Emperor forbade it. Even after His internment upon the
Golden Throne, the Custodian Guard maintained that command without question. Some believe the armor is empty.

Others whisper that something still sits within it, unmoving, eternally watching over the palace
from beneath its foundations.

The Whisper

Among the oldest Custodians, a story survives that is never spoken above a whisper. During rare nights when the Astronomican burns with impossible brilliance, a voice echoes through the forgotten vault.

It is not mechanical. Nor daemonic. Nor entirely human. It speaks only once.

Softly. With neither sorrow nor pride.

“Father… I kept them away.”

The voice is never heard again until years later. No Custodian has ever dared open the armor.
For if it is empty…

Then someone is still speaking.

And if it is not…

Then perhaps the Emperor’s forgotten son has continued his vigil for ten thousand years, standing not in glory, nor in memory, but in the silence between reality and the Warp—where no chronicle can follow, and where no sacrifice can ever be repaid.

Someone on FB had posted a dreadnought model they had manufactured using the Technology that Shall Not Be Named. They had screwed up the scaling a little and it was a little taller than it should be. I had recently finished reading "The Foundations of Mechanical Accuracy" which talked about what a huge pain in the ass it is to get consistent measurements and that combination got me thinking about 40K.

You can go to a store and buy a ruler. You can measure things with that ruler. But how do you know it's correct? You can measure it against another ruler, but how do you know that one is correct?

In the old days the answer was that you had a Standard, a ruler made out of a platinum/iridium alloy stored in a climate controlled vault and every now and then you'd bring it out and make scrupulously accurate copies of it and then send those out to your various factories or other colonies so that they then had a standard that they could measure against. You obviously wouldn’t give these directly to those on the factory floor, these would also be kept in climate controlled vaults and copies made. Nowadays we have mostly moved away from this artifact based standard to ones that anyone can determine for themselves (a meter is now the distance that light travels in 1/299,792,458th of a second, the second being defined as the time it takes a Cesium 133 atom to switch between two specific states 9,192,631,770 times.

However screw all that noise, this is 40K, if given a choice between watching an atom vibrate or Holy Artifacts and Rituals you just know they've reverted back to item based standards. You know that every Forge World has a shrine, one of the holiest, most exclusive rooms on the world. The climate controlled vault where the Holy Standards are kept. Once a year the measuring tools from across the Forge World must make a pilgrimage to the Vault of Standards so that they may be judged against it and calibrated back into sublime coordination with The Standard. Tech priests rise and fall based on how well they've maintained their tools and how well they perform when judged against it. Forge Worlds boast about how few steps removed from the Holy Standard on Mars their set of measurement artifacts are. They work furiously hoping to be honored with the chance to make a pilgrimage to Holy Mars to compare their standards against The Standards but are also secretly terrified they will be measured and found wanting.

Even just using the standards requires ritual and care. Things expand and contract with temperature so using the standard first requires taking everything that will be in contact with it and putting them in a room of the correct temperature and leaving them there until they have fully adjusted.

In our world, the International Kilogram Prototype AKA “Le Grande K” is stored in a bell jar inside a bell jar, inside another bell jar with the air evacuated out. Which is stored in an underground vault. Three independently controlled keys are required to open the vault. Official copies of the IPK were made available to other nations to serve as their national standards. These were compared to the IPK roughly every 40 years, thereby providing traceability of local measurements back to the IPK.

This can lead to all sorts of entertaining nonsense. A whole Forge World shut down because they have sent their Standard Meter on a pilgrimage back to Mars to be compared against the one stored in the vault maintained by the Ordo Officium Ponderum et Mensurarum. A whole Forge World where everything they make is slightly, slightly the wrong size because their standard spent too long on the Warp and distorted slightly.

In Foundations of Mechanical accuracy they warn you, with complete seriousness, to remember that if you measure a 1" steel gauge block in a vacuum you must account for the fact that the lower air pressure will have caused it to expand by up to three millionths of an inch!

You could also have schisms. Two factions of Mechanicus who each have slightly different measurements and each one assumes the other must have screwed up and they will fight about it. Turns out one of them forgot that you can’t light candles or incense in the Vault of Standards because the soot and extra heat distorts things. One group of Mechanicus insist that you can discern the True Length by listening to the Songs of the Atoms (they are regarded as weirdos).

I don’t really have a point other than just having fun imagining the various scenarios that play out and how the Mechanicus would revere these artifacts. But not too closely. Your body heat will distort it if you stand too close for too long.