Every Once In a While I Repost This Thing I Spent Way Too Long Writing Ages Ago So New People Can See It. It's About Warhammer. Sorry If You Don't Like Warhammer. But You Might Like It Anyway? It's Written For New Folk And There's Jokes And Stuff.

This is the Emperor of Man. He's kind of a big deal. In the distant past thousands of prehistoric shaman types committed mass ritual suicide and were reincarnated into this single soul of enormous, god-like psychic power. If you think that already sounds dumb then I'm going to need you to pace yourself.

For reasons we don't have time to get into this guy finds himself In Charge in the year 30,000 and something. Humanity has already spread out over the galaxy but has become disconnected from Terra (Earth) and he wants to unify everyone. To do this he needs super soldiers, so he makes 2̶0̶ 1̶8̶ 19 super babies by tinkering his own genetic code, before imbuing each with a fragment of his super-soul, a little like horcrux babies. If this doesn't sound preposterous enough already, he did this in a lab on the Moon.

I warned you. You scoffed too hard at the Shaman-Voltron-Mega-Soul and now there's a super-baby making moon-base and you've run out of scoffing room.

Anyway, before he could finish a bunch of Chaos gods scatter these super-babies into the Warp, which we also don't have time to get into. But they end up on planets all over the disconnected galaxy. This event is called The Scattering, because presumably it demanded a certain urgency and there was just no time to be creative, name-wise. What follows is an accounting of the origins of these monster babies, otherwise known as The Primarchs.

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So yous have something nice to look at I have chosen illustrations by Johannes Helgeson, because they're great and he's great. You can find more of his work here https://www.artstation.com/helgesonart where he helpfully includes WIP images so you can confirm for yourself that no these are not AI. He's very talented and also how dare you.

[Updates by 2025 Me in Square Brackets. If you only read one, read Mortarian. If you read... three, Mortarian, Vulkan and Lorgar.]

Lion El' Jonson, Primarch of the Dark Angels.

Baby number one found himself on the nightmare world of Caliban. In the grand tradition of sci-fi worlds everywhere 40k worlds are usually defined by one sort of geography, and Caliban is a forest world packed to the gills with horrible monsters. The Lion spends his formative years as a sort of Demon Fighting Mowgli, before being inducted into an order of feudal knights. He's awesome at strategy and sword-fighting, but a bit hard to get on with as he learned to tear out demon throats with his teeth before he could talk.

Currently missing in the 40k universe (unless you know who to ask), there's rumours he may be about to resurface meaning there'll be little plastic men of him kicking around in the 2k universe. I'm quietly excited. [This turned out to be true, I've even got one. No it's not painted. Rude.]

(RL fact: named for the poet Lionel Jonson, who had something to do with Byron? I dunno, who cares, that's not about Future Space Men.)

Fulgrim, Primarch of the Emperor's Children.

Fulgrim landed on a factory world, and in 50 short years was King of Factories for the entire planet. I'll be honest my knowledge of these guys is a bit uneven. Fulgrim likes art... and er... purple? He's a Daemon Prince now, and by all accounts a bit of a dick. [And a snake. Like, literally a snake, there's a little plastic man of him too.]

Perturabo, Primarch of the Iron Warriors.

Perturabo was scattered to the planet Olympia. Where others were discovered as babies Ol' Petey was discovered as an adolescent boy climbing a cliff. It's his earliest memory. Like Lionel above there are stories of a creepy forest boy fighting animals, but Ol' Petey didn't remember any of that, as far as he knew he was just a fully cognisant, rock-climbing boy and always had been. He was also a master of mechanics, instantly able to determine how anything was constructed just by looking at it. As something of a marvel he was presented to a King, adopted as his son and went on to many great and horrible deeds.

For an insight into his personality we have to go beyond origins a bit. While the Primarchs are out in the galaxy rising to prominence on whatever shit-hole they landed on their god-dad is getting super busy. He's decided not to take the supernatural kidnapping of his sons lying down and has assembled a vast army of armoured supermen, divided into Legions each of which takes a genetic blueprint from one of his Primarchs. He sets out on a massive crusade into the galaxy to rediscover his monster babies and unify humanity. When he finds one he presents himself to them in some legendary fashion and convinces them to take command of their Legion in his name.

So we get to this event in Ol' Petey's history, and in his usual cold, calculating, machine-like manner he examines the war records of his Legion - a bunch of work-horse soldiers who have no time for fancy strategies like not dying in droves. Finding them somewhat lacking, his first act as their new leader is to order Decimation. For those unfamiliar with this actual for-real historic morale-booster: soldiers draw lots, 1 in 10 are "it", where being "it" means the 9/10ths who are not "it" savagely beat your ass to death with their bare hands, or sometimes - if they're feeling jaunty - clubs.

So yeah, Ol' Petey is a massive tool, which he'd probably take as a compliment.

Jaghatai Khan, Primarch of the White Scars.

Genghis Khan in Space. He likes going fast. If he can't do it fast he's not interested. Presumably a terrible lay.

Leman Russ, Primarch of the Space Wolves.

Leman Russ was raised by wolves on a viking ice-planet. You can tell this because of the literally everything about him. He's basically Space Thor. He loves fighting and fighting accessories.

[No little plastic man of Leman, sadly, but I bet he's next]

Rogal Dorn, Primarch of the Imperial Fists.

His history is very vanilla. Taken in by a wealthy family, rose to prominence, Space Emperor in his own right. Yawn. Wait, *Rogal* Yawn! Ah, I amuse myself.

Often depicted with a kick-ass moustache, but there's no origin story for that, sadly. Contends with Perturabo for the title of Primarch blanket-fort champion.

[Wait no moustache? What the actual hell, Johannes.]

Konrad Curze, Primarch of the Night Lords.

AKA The Night Haunter. Kurze is a sort of Dexter/Batman on his founding planet of Nostramo, which was kind of a cross between Gotham and Lake Town. While others rise to prominence by becoming the best Knight or Viking or Factory Worker, Curze killed criminals. He killed so many that he got to be King (and bogeyman) of his planet. No, I don't know how that works either. But it happened. A low-key precog, he's tormented by psychic visions of the future, including his own death. All Primarchs are said to take their essence from an element of The Emperor's personality. He is the Emperor's goth side.

When the Emperor arrives on G̶o̶t̶h̶a̶m̶ Nostramo to take Konrad into the fold he walks through the streets on foot, followed by a retinue including four of his already-discovered sons. Being a sort of god-being he radiates brightness to the point that the darkness adapted citizens can hardly bear to look at him, the few who do go blind, and most just weep cos the light is also healing? See this is why I told you to pace yourself.

Following this dramatic entrance Superdad arrives at Konrad's palace, where Konrad - never one to be outdone, edgy fuck that he is - tries to claw his own eyes out. The Emperor stops him and the following exchange takes place:
"Konrad Curze, be at peace, for I have arrived and intend to take you home."
"That is not my name, Father. I am Night Haunter, and I know full well what you intend for me."

Goth. As. Fuck.

Sanguinius, Primarch of the Blood Angels.

This guy's theme, if you can't tell, is blood. I thought about just writing "blood blood blood blood" for his description. But here goes.

Where most guys get a planet to call home Sanguinius gets a radiation soaked moon called Baal Secundus. He's found and adopted as a baby by a tribe called 'The Blood' (told you) and grew up fast. That's not a metaphor for a hard childhood: by three weeks he was a large child walking around, and at a year was taller than any man. Also apparently he killed a giant mutant scorpion before The Blood even found him, which must have looked ridiculous. A lightning bolt scar on his forehead from this encounter is sadly unconfirmed.

He does have giant angel wings (either by design or as a result of living on a radioactive moon) and like Conrad Kurze is a precog, but not as edgy about it. In fact he's fucking lovely, and everyone likes him a lot, as the element he took from the Emperor was an inherent likeability or something? On his home-moon he's worshipped as a god, which as an angel-winged, mutant slaying giant is probably natural. You honestly have to wonder why it doesn't happen more often.

Ferrus Manus, Primarch of the Iron Hands.

This guy, whose name is latin for "iron hands" has literal iron hands* and called his legion The Iron Hands. So I find him hard to take seriously. His thing is blacksmithery, and like Perturabo he likes machines. Unlike Perturabo he's not a dick about it, although he is a bit stand-offish, preferring not to get entangled in the events of his scatter-home planet Medusa, which is unusual for these guys.

*Okay not literally iron, but they are metal, which he got in a smelting accident when he drowned a monstrous metal wyrm in a pool of magma. As you do.

Angron, Primarch of the World Eaters.

This guy is a treat so apologies in advance for the word count. The world Angron ended up on, Nuceria, was a relatively technologically advanced but relatively barbaric world. Like they had surgery and technology, but also slavery and gladiatorial contests. Put a pin in that.

He is "first" found by slavers, I say "first", because when they found the Primarch infant he was wounded, surrounded by miscellaneous meat chunks and a fine red mist. In later times scholars would theorise these remains belonged to some Space Elves who'd predicted Angron's future and tried to John Connor him before he'd even got started. Not a great sign.

The slavers nurse Angron back to health, not because they're nice but because they're slavers who wanted to enslave him. Remember our pin? The slavers of Nuceria liked to surgically alter their gladiators with something called "The Butcher's Nails", a sort of cranial implant that makes it so the brain can only get pleasure from aggression, brutality and violence. This has the added benefit of making them fly off the fucking handle at the slightest provocation, or just for no reason at all.

So equipped, Angron went on to become the greatest of all Nuceria's Gladiators, eventually leading a Spartacus style gladiator revolt by giggle-murdering his way through the arena crowd. After years of fighting a guerrilla war with the planet's forces (just like Spartacus!) he was forced into the mountains where his ex-gladiator buddies suffered starvation and exposure (just like Spartacus!). Surrounded by enemy forces the end seemed near when who should appear from the sky but the Space Emperor of Man (Just like Spar... no wait that's new).

Here's what makes Angron unique. The Emperor makes his customary offer to Angron, to join him in his galaxy spanning crusade, leading a legion of Space Marines against the enemies of humanity. Angron mulls this over and says "Mmm, no thanks. See we're surrounded by seven huge armies who want to annihilate us on this mountainside and that sounds like a good time to me. See ya 'round, Dad," before giggling "or not, because we're all certain to die."

In the entire history of the Primarchs this had never happened before, or will again, so the confused Emperor wishes his son all the best on his imminent martyrdom and leaves. The armies of Nuceria close in on Angron's band of freed slaves. Just as everything is about to kick off Angron is teleported up to the Emperor's orbiting ship, which has a nice big window that he can use to watch all his friends die.

Understandably peeved Angron enters a massive rage-sulk. It's not entirely clear if this was because all his friends died or if because he had to watch some violence he couldn't participate in... probably a bit of both. Captains of his Legion (the War Hounds) are sent to console him and are brutally murdered for their trouble (ordered as they were not to raise a hand against him, not that it would have made much difference). Eventually a Captain Khârn drew the short straw and managed to live long enough to regale Angron with his own tales of bloody ultra-violence. This cheered Angron up enough that he finally decided to take command of his Legion, which he renamed the World Eaters, to absolutely no nervous sideways glances at all.

Roboute Guilliman, Primarch of the Ultramarines.

Not much is known about this mysterious and enigmatic figure.

Mortarion, Primarch of the Death Guard.

Mortarion might have the roughest deal of all. In The Scattering he was deposited on the world of Barbarus, a dim mountainous ball of toxic fog bullshit barely fit for human habitation. The higher you go, the worse the air gets, forcing humanity into the valleys. Above them on the mountains live some horrible fucking aliens/undead/somethings that lord it over the humans below by striking from their unassailable fog strongholds.

Initially Morty gets a brief upbringing with the undead whatevers, who discovered him as a squalling infant in the aftermath of a battle. They marvelled at his ability to survive the heinous gasses that would kill lesser humans, and raised him as one of their stinky warriors.

As an adult Morty escaped to the valleys below and discovered humans for the first time, instantly recognising them as His People. Unfortunately for Morty his years on the toxic guff slopes had left him truly horrifying to look upon, and the valley humans - reduced to peasants by centuries of raids by literal shitlords - initially shunned this towering Frankenstein of a man.

Then, everything changed when the F̶i̶r̶e̶ ̶N̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ Fart Zombies attacked. Normally this'd be a fairly one sided affair, but Morty wades into the reeking enemy with a giant two handed scythe, and everyone was rightly impressed as he sends them running for the beefy hills.

Over the next few years Morty is a one man Seven Samurai; travelling from village to village uniting the people, turning farmers into fighters, bringing the people the technology, industry and tactics they'd need to resist the invaders from the chuff mountains. Later, he equips his hardiest warriors with crude air filtration and breathing apparatus and takes the fight right to the heart of Those Who Dealt It. These elite warriors were his Death Guard.

Six paragraphs in, and running low on fart jokes, it was clear his story would soon be ending. With the planet all but unified behind him only one zombie warlord remained, on a mountain so high and eye-wateringly toxic that even the Death Guard couldn't go there, no matter how many matches they lit. While musing over this who should arrive but the Man Emperor himself.

"Mortarion" He says, you know how it goes by now, come with Me and command My warriors, etc etc.
"I can't" says Morty, "I have to defend My People from this bastard, for he is... my FATHER!"
"No he's not." says the Emperor.
"What?"
"Nothing. I'll do you a deal, attack this last stronghold alone. Fail, and you will join me in total obedience."
"And if I win?"
"That outcome is not explained in the wiki, so I have no idea why you'd agree to this. Maybe it's a dare?"
"Alright, you're on."

With this terrible bargain struck Morty ascended the slopes alone, higher than he'd ever gone before to the walls of the ultimate fartress. He confronts Fart Vader and they do battle, but the fog closes in and the tubes of Morty's breathing apparatus start to corrode. "Jesus Christ, what the fuck did you eat?" Morty tries to say, but the air is too foul to even get the words out. He collapses. As the light grows dim he sees his zombie dad close in for the killing blow...

But then who should appear but the Emperor, from before! "Pull my finger" he says, proving he is the one true Dad as he cuts the last warlord down in a single strike.

Jesus this one got away from me. He joins the Emperor, renames the Dusk Raiders Legion as the Death Guard and they both lived happily ever after.

Magnus the Red, Primarch of the Thousand Sons

I'm unexcited by Magnus' origins. He's a big psychic boy wizard, or psyker, who landed on Prospero which is sort of an intergalactic Hogwarts. He always knew what he was and where he came from, and could even have long distance magic chats with the Dad Emperor before he was physically found. He fights some wasps, that is basically it. He does get more exciting after that, but that's Great Crusade territory which is far too big a subject to get into right now, and as I just wrote a novella about Mortarion's Battle for Fart Planet you know I mean it.

Horus Lupercal, Primarch of the Lunar Wolves.

Horus gets, initially, a pretty easy time of it. In the galaxy spanning Scattering he's deposited practically next door, and as such is found before he's even reached adulthood. There's one story that he even finds his own way back home. Either way he gets to grow up with Dad, basically getting the Only Child experience for 30 odd years before anyone else is discovered. As such he's papa's favourite, grows up big and strong and gets to lead the Armies of Man when dad isn't around. To do this he's given the not at all ominous title of Warmaster.

And they both lived happily ever after.

Lorgar, Primarch of the Word Bearers

If you haven't seen the pattern by now the Primarchs often tend to land on a theme planet and then come to embody that theme in everything they do, excelling to a ludicrous degree in this randomly assigned field. Land on Murder Planet, become the best murderer; Factory Planet, best at factories; Viking Planet, best Viking, etc. Lorgar landed on Planet Religion.

This planet, Colchis, was all about a religion called the Covenant. Young Lorgar gets chucked into their equivalent of the Seminary and learns all there is to know about their faith. Like all Primarchs he's a prodigy and is in time elected to the top office of Regional Space Pope.

Like some of his brothers he has future visions, mostly of a bright, bronze-clad figure accompanied by a red one-eyed giant. He takes this to be the second coming of the One True God, which is a pickle for the many-godded religion of the Covenant. Nonetheless he's Pope so he gets his preach on and creates a schism that plunges his planet into sectarian war, which he wins, celebrating with a purge of non-believers.

A year later the Emperor arrives accompanied by his red one-eyed giant son, so you can just imagine how smug Lorgar was. He starts worshipping his dad as a god, which doesn't exactly sit well with dad who is actively trying to get humanity to stop being superstitious and start being about science and knowledge. Which is a bit rich for a glowing, magic man.

After taking command of his Legion Lorgar takes it upon himself to write the Lectitio Divinitatus, basically a big Bible telling everyone how his dad is definitely a god even though he said he wasn't one. To Lorgar this is just something the One True God would say, so shut up and pass the hair shirt, heretic.

This book, and the Word Bearers habit of pursuing the religious victory in their intergalactic Civ games, would start a cult which would go on to become the dominant religion of the Imperium in the 40k universe. Basically all the Heresy memes (see comments) are his fault.

Eventually the Emperor grew Sick of This Shit. Accompanied by his most mysterious son, Roboute Guilliman, he personally chastised Lorgar for all his religious nonsense. He had his boy RG knock down an entire planet's worth of tacky cathedrals, and then had Lorgar and his entire Legion kneel before him. "Now that you're bowing before my divine aura, hear this," he said, magically enhancing his voice so all could hear, "I am not a god. Stop being pricks. Also don't look at me in case you go blind. Once again, not a god."

Humiliated by his father/god in front of all his friends, Lorgar put on his favourite hair shirt and sulked for a month. Just as the Emperor was about to tell him off again the Word Bearers resumed their world conquering, only this time without all the pesky religious shit that had been slowing things down.

"I am the greatest leader ever," said the Emperor, obliviously.

Vulkan, Primarch of the Salamanders

Vulkan landed on Friend Planet where he grew up in a friendly village among friends as the friendly local blacksmith. As such he's somewhat of an asshole. J/k you guys, he's friendly as fuck. Unless you aren't friends with his friends, in which case he will probably hit you with a hammer. He's the biggest of all the Primarchs (not counting Magnus and his magic cheat codes), has coal black fireproof skin and is immortal.

His origin tale isn't as exciting as some. First he leads his people against some Dark Eldar raiders. They've been coming around for ages and everyone on Friend Planet usually just hides, because the Dark Eldar are some edgy motherfuckers who will, if they're feeling kind, turn you into a human centipede for a lark. Shortly after Vulkan arrives the Dark Eldar show up and he just stands out in the middle of his village with a couple of big-ass hammers. "Wait," say the people "we can NOT hide? This changes everything!" and they all rise up and the Dark Eldar piss off forever.

And so dawns a new age of friendship. Soon the Emperor shows up in disguise, arriving during one of the planet's many friendship festivals and challenges Vulkan to a contest where the loser will serve the other one, forever. After 8 days of log throwing and weight lifting to no result a new contest is devised: the contestants will forge a weapon, go out into the wild and bring back the biggest salamander they can find. Salamanders on Friend Planet are big drake things rather than little lizards so this is more dangerous than it sounds.

Vulkan goes out and grabs the biggest lizard he has ever seen, on his way back the mountain he's standing on remembers it's actually a volcano and explodes. Somehow Vulkan finds himself hanging off a cliff by one hand, holding his giant lizard in the other and surrounded by lava flows. His prize is too heavy to pull himself up, but he doesn't want to drop it and lose the contest, so he just hangs there for like half a day.

Just as his strength is about to give out who should appear but the still-disguised Emperor carrying an even bigger lizard. Now I spent a long time trying to work out why Vulkan wouldn't just do the obvious thing and drop his now-worthless regular lizard, and here's my conclusion: the thing is obviously still alive. They never said you had to kill it, just bring it back, and Friend Vulkan isn't going to hurt a fly he doesn't have to, much less a glorious fire drake the size of a minivan. The Emperor, fortunately having no such qualms, throws his dead but still prize-winning catch into the lava to create a bridge, rushes over to Vulkan, pulls him and his scaly friend up and all three escape over the rapidly combusting impromptu lizard bridge.

The three friends return to the village and everyone celebrates Vulkan winning the contest, but his bro-code won't let him accept: anyone who'll put friends before a contest to effectively win a slave is alright in his book, and the stranger has earned his allegiance. The Emperor throws back his hood (no doubt blinding several unlucky children who didn't look away quick enough) revealing himself as the Emperor of Man and the Dad of Vulkan in particular, and they all laughed like at the end of a GI Joe.

Corvus Corax, Primarch of the Raven Guard

Corvus has the misfortune to land on the wasteland moon of Lycaeus, populated by slave-miners in thrall to a bunch of techy nobs who control the much nicer neighbouring planet Kiavahr. The miners take him in and raise him as a leader. Primarchs are good at that sort of thing, and in no time at all Corvus has freed the slaves in a violent uprising (hooray) and nuked the five main population centres of the planet below (hooray?)

Alpharius and Omegon, Twin Primarchs of the Alpha Legion.

These two are a lot to get into, which is just as well because I made a whole post about them a few weeks [many years] ago: https://imgur.com/gallery/WI2CG You're gonna want to make a coffee for these two.

This concludes our tale of the Primarchs. This turned out way longer than I intended and I apologise to your eyes.

If your personal favourite didn't get a big look then that's probably because I have plans to write a more in depth post about them in future like I did with Alpharius, so look out for that*. I'm bad at endings... Bye!

[*Turned out not to be true in the slightest.]

[That art credit again: https://www.artstation.com/helgesonart ]