Characters / Warhammer 40,000: Primarchs

Warhammer 40,000 Main Character Index
Imperium of Man: Founders, The Primarchs, Adeptus Astartes (First Founding Chapters, Other Chapters, Characters, Primaris Marines), Astra Militarum, Adepta Sororitas, Inquisition, Mechanicus, Other factions
Forces of Chaos: Chaos Gods, Chaos Primarchs, Chaos Marines
Xeno Races: Aeldari (Asuryani, Drukhari) | Leagues of Votann | Necrons | Orks (Characters) | T'au Empire | Tyranids (Genestealer Cults)

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From the left (click for full size): Sanguinius, Mortarion, Magnus the Red, Angron, Jaghatai Khan, Lorgar Aurelian, Rogal Dorn, Horus Lupercal, and Fulgrim.

Each of us carries part of our father within us, whether it is his hunger for battle, his psychic talent or his determination to succeed.

In the process of creating the Space Marine Legions, the Emperor created twenty clone-sons from his own DNA to serve as templates for the legions. They were scattered across the galaxy by the Chaos Gods in their infancy, to be recovered by the Emperor as the Great Crusade progressed. These posthuman demigods rose to dominate the worlds they landed upon, and each was given command of the Space Marine legion based off his DNA. For a time they stood as humanity's ultimate warriors, but when the Horus Heresy erupted half of them became mankind's greatest foes. In the 41st Millennium they have passed into legend, as the mythic founders of the Imperium and the forefathers of the loyalist First Founding Space Marine chapters.

For information on the Traitor Primarchs, see the Chaos Primarchs character page

For more about the Primarchs' legions, see the Space Marines and Chaos Marines character pages.

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General Tropes

• The Ageless: The Primarchs seem to stop physically aging after reaching maturity. In theory, they are biologically immortal unless killed. However, this trope appears to be zigzagged.
  • When Perturabo and his Iron Warriors battled the time-manipulating Hrud species, his Astartes aged to dust in minutes of exposure to the accelerated time fields the Hrud emit. Perturabo was physically unchanged despite experiencing what had to equivalent to tens of thousands of years forced on him.
  • Lion El'Jonnson, on the other hand, has clearly aged after ten millennia. It's been theorized in-universe that being struck with a Chaos weapon wielded by Luther during the Breaking of Caliban caused him to age more conventionally than he otherwise would have, although it hasn't been addressed.
• Ambiguously Human:
  • Despite being touted as the ultimate humans, just shy of the Emperor himself, they are so different in both appearance and biology that they may as well a different species altogether. They're impossibly large, strong beyond measure, faster than even an Astartes can track, intelligent enough to surpass most supercomputers, and are so innately psychically powerful that most humans are overwhelmed just by being near them. They also grew to adulthood from infancy in a few years, have a variety of new and redundant organs, and can have unnatural skin pigments among other anatomical oddities. When Horus was wounded by the Anathame, his legion's highly trained and experienced Apothecaries didn't even know where to start when they opened him up to treat the injury.
  • It's been heavily suggested that the Emperor utilitized animal DNA when creating the Primarchs, which would explain Russ's wolf traits and Sanguinius's wings.
  • It's been very strongly implied that the Emperor used non-Chaos Warp entities in the creation of the Primarchs. Each of them has been shown to passively emit a psychic signal that impacts the minds of others in their presence. Some of them have manifested abilities that cannot be explained with technology or biology alone. Clones made of them are shown lack both of these features and were notably weaker despite otherwise being physically identical, offering further proof that the Primarchs were not purely physical beings.^note The lone exception being the perfect clone of Fulgrim that Fabius Bile managed to create. Even Bile himself isn't sure how he did it, and why this clone was different from all his failures. It's speculated that the actual soul of the original Fulgrim might have somehow escaped from Slaanesh to occupy the clone body, which would mean the clone is now the real Fulgrim. Too bad he's currently locked up in Trazyn the Infinite's "carefully, curated collection".
• Artificial Human: They were grown and modified in the Emperor's gene labs to create transhuman generals to serve his specific purposes.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: The Primarchs were made to be superlative warriors and generals so that in time they would lead their Space Marine legions to conquer the galaxy.
• Badass Cape: Horus, Rogal Dorn, Fulgrim, Lion El'Jonnson, Konrad Curze and Leman Russ... most of the Primarchs would wear capes, which were already badass for their sheer size.
• Battle Trophy: Most had some sort of collection of various trophies during the Great Crusade. Fulgrim presented Ferrus Manus' head to Horus during the Heresy and (during 5th Edition) it was implied that Trazyn the Infinite has a primarch in stasis as part of his collection (this turned out to be false)^note Trazyn does arguably have a primarch in his collection — a clone of Fulgrim that uniquely amongst Fabius Bile's many primarch cloning attempts turned out perfectly in every way including the inimitable primarch presence and urge of the associated legion to obey — but he acquired it later and it didn't originate as this trope.
• Beware the Nice Ones:
  • Sanguinius was perhaps the noblest of the Primarchs, firmly believing that humanity should be ruled by its hopes and dreams. He also regularly tore apart Greater Daemons of Chaos.
  • Vulkan's compassion for civilians led him to place his own Salamanders in more risk to protect the humans. He could send Predators and Land Raiders flying through the air with a single swing of his Thunder Hammer.
  • Corax strongly believed in the Space Marines being the liberators of humankind, not enslavers. During the Drop Site Massacre he tore through Daemon-possessed Space Marines like they were paper.
  • Roboute Guilliman set up the most functional government of the post-Heresy Imperium due to his beliefs in the Astartes serving humanity. During the Battle of Calth he decapitated fully-armed Word Bearers by punching their heads off.
  • Lorgar hated fighting and wanted nothing more than have philosophical discussions with his brothers, yet was the first one to turn to Chaos and started the Heresy to begin with.
• Beware the Superman: The Primarchs didn't want their Space Marine legions to be subordinated to the imperial bureaucracy. Roboute Guilliman claimed Astartes protect humanity, not rule it, but structured his empire to function to his exact specifications. Horus simply didn't like the idea of taking orders from ordinary humans. In response, the bureaucracy distrusted the legions.
• Big Damn Heroes: The reason Horus had to challenge the Emperor to personal combat was because he knew the Ultramarines, Space Wolves, and Dark Angels were all rushing to the relief of Terra, extremely hacked off and ready to crush his exhausted forces. If the Emperor had known this, he may have decided to wait the attackers out rather than take the bait to make a desperate counter-attack. Unfortunately, he didn't and the rest is history.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: The Primarchs were 19 (originally, 21) brothers who not only were rivals in terms of conquests, but also had violently opposite philosophies such as the place of psychic powers for mankind, how to best serve the Imperium, how much worth was mankind compared to them and so on. A few of them could also be called unstable, such as Konrad Curze or Angron. Their father, the Emperor of Mankind, didn't help much. His parenting was, at best, distant and openly preferential. At worst, he outright cruel and callous to them. We'd be here all day if we scratched the surface of the issues that plague their legions of Space Marine "sons".
• Bling of War: Standard battle dress for the Primarchs was solid gold power armour, ranging from Artificer to Terminator armour. Mortarion was actually notable for not having excessive bling.
• Bling-Bling-BANG!: The Primarchs' standard arms were master-crafted power and chain weapons. Ferrus Manus was notable for not having blinged-out weaponry.
• Bodyguarding a Badass: They had bodyguards of mere Space Marines. Lampshaded by Corax after he dissolves his honour guard during the Drop Site Massacre:
  That was for appearance. Do you think I actually need a bodyguard?
• Body Motifs:
  • Eyes: The eye of Horus. One-eyed Magnus.
  • Hands: The disembodied hands of Rogal Dorn. Ferrus Manus' iron hands. The Talon of Horus.
• Broken Ace: The Primarchs were humanity's greatest heroes and leaders, but they had some issues. The Traitor Primarchs take it up a notch, particularly Angron.
• Cain and Abel: All the resentment the Primarchs harbored toward each other exploded in violence during the Horus Heresy, resulting in several Primarchs killing their brothers, or at least trying really hard to.
  • Most prominently, Fulgrim killed Ferrus Manus, and Horus killed Sanguinius during the Siege of Terra.
  • Leman Russ hated Magnus so much he didn't think twice when he received orders to exterminate the Thousand Sons along with their leader, and the two battled to the death. Nonetheless both Leman and Magnus survived the battle of Prospero.
  • Konrad Curze killed Vulkan multiple times when he imprisoned the latter, but Vulkan can resurrect.
  • Perturabo and his Iron Warriors goaded Rogal Dorn and his Imperial Fists into besieging a massive fortress of their creation during the "Iron Cage" incident, partially to challenge Dorn's claim that he could tear down any fortification with the proper resources, even one of Perturabo's. Dorn and his sons did in fact break through, but suffered massive casualties and would have been wiped out in Perturabo's final trap within the fortress had Roboute Guilliman and his Ultramarines not arrived to bail them out.
  • During the Great Scouring, Fulgrim fatally wounded Guilliman during the Battle of Thessala, leading to Guilliman being placed in stasis for the following 10,000+ years.
  • In the 41st millennium, after Guilliman is resurrected, Magnus hunted Guilliman down and almost killed him on Luna.
  • During the Plague Wars Mortarion actually 'succeeded in fatally wounding Guilliman, only for the Emperor to psychically possess Guilliman, heal him and burn down a chunk of Nurgle's Garden.
• Calling the Old Man Out: The Horus Heresy in a nutshell. Half of them jumped ship because they wanted to tell Daddy Emperor that he's an asshole.
• Captain Ersatz: Prior to their first meeting with the Emperor, you had Konrad Curze as a Darker and Edgier version of Batman, Angron as a cyber-augmented Spartacus, and Jaghatai Khan as Genghis Khan.
• Charm Person: The Primarchs are frequently portrayed as radiating so much awe and fear that normal humans often find themselves compelled to bow in their presence and obey their every word without question. Similarly, whenever a Primarch was reunited with their Legion, their gene-sons almost always began emulating their ideals and personality traits regardless of how they behaved beforehand. Only a rare few strong willed or psychically powerful individuals were able ignore this allure.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: All of the Primarchs found themselves on worlds where their skills allowed them to improve the lives of their fellow humans and felt compelled to do so when given the chance. Some more effectively than others, depending on their circumstances. Konrad Curze was particularly twisted example of this as his compulsion to uplift Nostramo combined with his precognition to drive him to insanity.
• Cultured Badass: The Primarchs were made to be warriors and generals, but some had upbringings that developed more scholarly tastes. Lion El'Jonson, Roboute Guilliman, Lorgar, and Magnus the Red were all very scholarly in their own ways. Lorgar in particular was fond of philosophy while Magnus simply liked all knowledge with an affinity for Warp-related things and made efforts to hoard all kinds of tomes and data. For his part, Fulgrim was an art amateur. These aspirations usually put the more scholarly Primarchs at odds with their war-like siblings: for instance Ferrus Manus, who was a master blacksmith himself, called Lorgar a weakling since his philosophy couldn't be applied to war. Ironically, Ferrus got along wonderfully with the artistic Fulgrim.
• Dead Guy on Display: Roboute Guilliman's body is a pilgrimage site , or at least it was until it was revealed he was not quite dead. Rogal Dorn's hands are a relic of the Imperial Fists. The rest of his body was never found, leading to the theory that he's still alive somewhere. Lion El'Jonson would be on display, if anyone other than the Watchers in the Dark knew where his body is. Horus' corpse was a thing of reverence for Chaos Marines until the Black Legion destroyed it.
• Deal with the Devil: The Chaos Gods insist that the Emperor had to cut one with them in order to make the Primarchs. While the Chaos Gods are obviously biased sources there is evidence that weren't entirely lying about this.
• The Dreaded: A near-universal trait among the Primarchs is that they inspire a sense of dread and fear in anyone they fight, even Space Marines, who are engineered to not feel fear at all. Aside from their sheer speed and power, every Primarch is psychic and projects a psychic aura that invokes awe among mortals, even Astartes.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: Primarch's minds do not work like normal humans', and many fans believe they show signs of autism spectrum disorders such as Guilliman's painstaking attention to detail and organisation skills; Rogal Dorn's Brutal Honesty and stoicism masking a capacity for extreme rage; and the Lion's poor social skills.
• The Dutiful Son: Horus (pre-heresy), Rogal Dorn, Leman Russ, Sangiunius, and Roboute Guilliman.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: In the '80s, the earliest mention of primarchs it was merely a title awarded to famous and important space marines. It was only later that the primarch evolved into these named demigods.
• Four-Star Badass: They were designed to be unparalleled warriors and military leaders capable of commanding entire campaigns on the scale of solar systems.
• Genetic Memory: The Emperor had them programmed with advanced knowledge and abilities from birth.
• Genius Bruiser: Their size and brawn make it clear that the Primarchs are great warriors, but they also are military geniuses who could think up the best strategy to conquer a planet, and some of them had knowledge genetically implanted in them.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Envy seemed to be a pretty common problem for Primarchs.
  • Both Guilliman and El'Jonson envied Horus his position as a Warmaster, though they didn't really act on it in any way.
  • Alpharius was jealous of other Primarchs' - especially Guilliman's - numerous victories, as he was rediscovered by the time the Great Crusade was reaching its end and had no opportunity to achieve as much as his brothers.
  • Perturabo was extremely envious of Rogal Dorn and his Legion. He felt like he was being constantly marginalized as his Astartes were often being left behind to build defenses instead of fighting on the frontlines and their contributions were being overlooked in favour of Imperial Fists. This has contributed to his eventual betrayal.
• Healing Factor: Injuring a Primarch is difficult to begin with, but when they are hurt, they will recover from all but critical injuries within a short time. That said, their healing does have its limitations and certain injuries like lost limbs will be permanent. A well-placed injury is capable of killing them outright the same as a normal human.
• Heroic BSoD:
  • The downfall of Corvus Corax, Primarch of the Raven Guard. After his chapter suffered terrible losses in the Horus Heresy, he turned to highly dangerous growth acceleration techniques to boost its numbers. This resulted in a nightmarish horde of misshapen monsters, most of who couldn't even hold a boltgun, and which had to be herded into battle. When the Heresy was over, Corax locked himself in his tower for a year and a day, finally emerging to personally give each one of his creations "the Emperor's peace" before leaving for parts unknown, his last word being "Nevermore".
  • Rogal Dorn after the Emperor died. He went from being the beloved son to an avenging angel dressed in black, and nearly went full-on Death Seeker.
  • Horus's BSOD was so epic, it ended up destroying the galaxy-wide empire he'd fought so hard to build in the first place.
• Humanoid Abomination: Not on the level of the Emperor, but the Horus Heresy books show unaugmented humans suffering Brown Notes upon seeing the Primarchs. It's described as sensory overload for weak willed normal humans to be near them. The transformation of Corvus Corax reveals that they are inherently a hybrid of human and Warp entity. When exposed to the Warp long enough, they can learn to embrace their nature and grow as powerful as any of their brother's daemonic forms under their own efforts. If the results of the battle between Corax and the daemonic Lorgar were any indication, the Primarchs that accepted daemonhood from Chaos may have actually limited their innate potential.
• Hypocrite: They're as prone to hypocrisy as any baseline human. For example: Angron loves to talk about how the Butcher's Nails ruined him, only to use them on his own legion.
• Immortal Immaturity: They all have a penchant for being much more irrational, impatient and petty than one would expect from genetically perfect superhumans. Particularly if it involves someone questioning their authority. The Traitor Primarchs especially had worse emotional issues than their Loyalist brethren. It's implied that this is a side effect of rapidly aging to adulthood: because the Primarchs physically grew so quickly, they all missed the vital emotional and social development that can only properly happen over the period of childhood and adolescence, leaving them far less well-adjusted and mature than they should be.
• Immortal Procreation Clause: The Emperor designed them to be infertile to ensure that their genetic modifications could not enter the gene pool of humanity at large.
• Immortality Begins at Twenty: The Primarchs aged from infancy to adulthood unnaturally quickly, but remain at that biological age indefinitely afterwards. The exact rate of this aging seems to vary between them, but none of them could be said to have had a normal childhood.
• In-Series Nickname: Overlaps with Red Baron. All the Primarchs bear multiple nicknames, generally meant to convey their status as the Emperor's best generals and warriors, or celebrating a glorious deed they committed in their lives.
  • Horus is nicknamed "Lupercal" by his legion (to the point it becomes his surname) and is otherwise known as The Breaker of Tyrants, The Favoured Son, or The Eye of Terra.
  • Angron: The Red Angel (he hates that one), Slaughterer of Nations, The Undefeated, Lord of the Red Sands.
  • Fulgrim: The Phoenician (alluding to the same bird as he put his legion back into shape when he came as they were on the brink of annihilation).
  • Ferrus Manus: The Gorgon, Wyrmslayer, The Bane of Asirnoth.
  • Konrad Curze: The Night Haunter (it even becomes the name of his split personality), The Last Judge, The King of Terrors.
  • Vulkan: The Promethean Fire, The Hammer of Salvation.
  • Lorgar: Aurelian, The Golden, The Voice of Truth, Urizen.
  • Perturabo: The Lord of Iron, The Breaker, The Hammer of Olympia.
  • Rogal Dorn: The Vigilant, The Blade of The Emperor, The Unyielding One.
  • Corvus Corax: The Liberator, Chooser of the Slain, The Shadowed Lord.
  • Roboute Guilliman: The Victorious, Ruler of Hosts, The Blade of Unity, the Avenging Son.
  • Magnus: The Red, The Sorcerer of Prospero, The Crimson King, The Logos Maxima, The Cyclopean Giant.
  • Leman Russ: The Lord of Winter and Ruin, The Wolf King of Fenris.
  • Lion El'Jonson: The First, The Lion.
  • Mortarion: The Pale King, The Traveller, Dread Liberator of Barbarus, Death Lord.
  • Alpharius: The Hydra, The Threefold Serpent.
  • Sanguinius: The Great Angel, The Brightest One.
  • Jaghatai Khan: The Great Khan, The Warhawk.
• Intelligence Equals Isolation: Many of the Primarchs comment on feeling alienated from the humans they spent their youth among thanks to their enhanced intellect. It wasn't until they were reunited with the Emperor and their brothers that they finally met other people that they could interact with as equals.
• King in the Mountain: Each of the former legions believes their Primarch will return in their time of greatest need. Even the Iron Hands, whose Primarch Ferrus Manus was decapitated on Istvaan V and whose skull is now in their possession, are convinced he will return even if they have to bring him back themselves. So far, only Guilliman and the Lion have made good.
  • The only exception to this rule is Sanguinius, whose martyrdom is legendary and indeed physically felt by the Blood Angels and their successors. They are under no illusion that Sanguinius can be revived or will return to them and make no effort to bring either about. Despite that, he (or a part of him) pays Dante and Mephiston a visit during their darkest hour at Baal to offer them guidance.
• Large and in Charge: The Primarchs were quite large, at least double the height and width of a normal human adult. Fulgrim wearing only a robe is remarked to be a head taller than his own First Captain in Terminator Armour. Even Alpharius and Omegon, the smallest of the Primarchs, were a head taller than the average Space Marine. Magnus was an absolute giant. To give a sense of scale, the average Space Marine stands a little above 2.1 meters (7 feet) tall. Lion El'Jonson, unarmored, is said to be a little over three meters tall. Magnus? Stands a full 5 meters, almost two meters taller than the Lion, and three taller than a Space Marine! Later sources somewhat scale him down to about 3.7 meters. Then again, he can control his size, like the time he made himself Titan-sized to fight one such machine. In-game, Magnus' Daemon Prince model is about as big as an Imperial Knight.
• Literal Split Personality: According to Kor Phaeron, each of the Primarchs embodies one aspect of the Emperor's own personality; Horus his ambition, Jaghatai his love of battle, Rogal his iron will, Sanguinius his humanity, etc.. The problem is that these traits were separated from others which kept them in check for the Emperor, leaving many of the Primarchs vulnerable to severe emotional imbalance.
• Made of Iron: The Primarchs have repeatedly displayed feats of incredible durability. They aren't quite bulletproof, but they have proven tough enough to shrug off hits in normal clothing that would have killed a fully armored Space Marine several times over.
• The Mothership: Each of the Primarchs had Gloriana-class battleships for a flagship. These ships were enormous as the smallest of them was twenty kilometers long, could fit a whole expeditionary corps and of course had so many guns and shields that they were beyond compare within the fleets of the Imperium. Each of the Gloriana-class battleships were also tailored to the specifications of each Primarch, and as such also reflected them like the Legions reflected their gene-sires. Some of the most known Gloriana-class battleships are the Vengeful Spirit, which was Horus' flagship and the place where Horus battled his father, or the Maccrage's Honour which serves as Roboute Guilliman's flagship after his comeback.
• One-Gender Race: The Primarchs are so far from normal humans that they barely qualify as part of the same species. Fearing the possibility that his creations (or the legions of Astartes based on their genetic templates) could reproduce and create powerful offshoot race that could outcompete baseline humanity, the Emperor deliberately made the Primarchs all male.
• Our Clones Are Different: The Primarchs are the 21 clone-sons of The Emperor created based on his god-like physiology, making them the second-most powerful members of the Imperium of Man. They are extremely altered from his source code, to the point that it's impossible to tell that they are clones at first glance.
• Parental Issues: A possible explanation for some of the Primarchs' falls from grace. All were scattered by the Chaos gods across the galaxy as infants, leaving some of them to effectively raise themselves. Horus was the first Primarch recovered and always his favorite, and some of the later Primarchs barely spent any time with their father at all, especially the last one to be found, Alpharius of the Alpha Legion.
• The Patriarch: Many Space Marines see their Primarchs this way, and the Emperor as that to their Primarchs. Given that all Space Marines are implanted with geneseeds descended from their Primarchs, and the Primarchs themselves were engineered with genes from the Emperor, this is almost literally the case. They have many rituals revering both Primarch and Emperor, resembling almost a form of filial piety and ancestor-worship, compared to the more distant and divine worship common to the rest of the Imperium. This actually caused some problems, as the Legions wound up with more loyalty to their Primarch than the Emperor or the Imperium itself.
• Physical God: Their superhuman might makes them equal or even superior to the Greater Daemons of the Chaos Gods and avatars of Eldar gods. But because of Imperial mandate, the primarchs don't see themselves as gods.
• Planet Baron: Most of them were ruling the planets they were stranded on by the time the Emperor found them.
• Pretty Boy: Sanguinius and Fulgrim are noted to be extraordinarily beautiful in a boyishly youthful way.
• Psychic Powers:
  • Magnus was the second most powerful psyker in human history, surpassed only by the Emperor. Appropriately, he embodied his father's psychic powers.
  • Sanguinius, Leman Russ, Konrad Curze, Lorgar, Lion el'Jonson, and most if not all of the rest of the Primarchs had at least rudimentary psychic abilities, mostly manifesting in prophetic visions of the future.
  • Lorgar was able to ward off Magnus's psychic projection. Sure, Magnus was light years away, but it is still a feat far beyond any alpha plus psyker of 40k.
• Punny Name: Lion El'Jonson, Angron, Ferrus Manus.
• Rage Against the Mentor: Horus versus the Emperor.
• Raised by Natives: Most of the Primarchs.
• Raised by Wolves: Lion El'Jonnson, Konrad Curze, and Leman Russ (quite literally). Well, after he crawled out of the volcano he made planetfall in...
• Rebel Leader: Lorgar, Angron, Corvus Corax, and Mortarion.
• Religious Bruiser: Lorgar, with terrible consequences. Also, in a shamanistic variant, Leman Russ.
• The Resenter:
  • Perturabo towards Rogal Dorn.
  • Horus suspected that Roboute Guilliman and Lion El'Jonnson resented not being chosen as Warmaster.
  • Alpharius in general, though especially towards Guilliman, for not being able to match his victory tally due to his late discovery (though this trope has been downplayed in much of the more recent lore).
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: Since they're considered the Emperor's sons, they're technically royalty. Ultimately subverted however, in that he never intended them to rule the Imperium, fearing that such a trend would lead instead to humanity being ruled by a genetically enhanced ruling class (ironic, considering that the Emperor was barely human himself), instead of by its own. Forcing them to be beholden to their inferiors who did nothing to help establish the Imperium also helped contribute to the Horus Heresy.
• Shrouded in Myth: The Imperium actively suppresses knowledge of the Heresy and of Chaos and refuses to acknowledge that the any of the Emperor's children were flawed in any way. The vast majority of the Imperium only know a fabricated legend where the Emperor created the nine Primarchs to fight against nine devils. After handily defeating the devils, the nine Primarchs, all still alive and accounted for, went to sleep until the Imperium needed them again.
• Sibling Rivalry: Present and accounted for. Since there's twenty of said siblings, elaborating would certainly get verbose.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: Primarchs are made in pairs, with each pair representing an aspect or a theme.
  • Sanguinius and Horus. The Aces who were the kindest and most adored.
  • Lion El'Jonson and Alpharius/Omegon. Larger than life secret keepers and proud knights.
  • Leman Russ and Magnus. Loyal sons with deep psychic affinity.
  • Roboute Guilliman and Lorgar Aurelian. Statesmen who were excellent administrators.
  • Rogal Dorn and Perturabo. Builders with unparalleled understanding of attrition warfare.
  • Jaghatai Khan and Mortarion. Fighters with an affinity for speed.
  • Corvus Corax and Konrad Curze. Stealthy skirmishers who mastered the night.
  • Fulgrim and Ferrus Manus. Master craftsmen with obsession of perfection.
  • Vulkan and Angron. Physically imposing men who were nonetheless made to be kind.
• Spare Body Parts: Each Primarch naturally has two hearts, three lungs, and multiple organs not found in baseline humans that serve functions designed by the Emperor and his scientists. Some of these new functions induce inducing hibernation upon intense injuries, near-instant blood clotting to seal wounds, or blocking radiation.
• The Strategist: Horus, Roboute Guilliman, Rogal Dorn, and Perturabo. Some lore has stated that Corax was a better tactician than Horus, and that many of Horus' most acclaimed victories were actually Horus taking credit for Corax's work. This doesn't seem likely, given how late in the Crusade Corax was recovered, and the amateur mistakes he made after Isstvan, however.
• Super Prototype: The Primarchs were the most perfect biogenetically engendered beings ever created by the Emperor and his scientists. Each Primarch was then used as a genetic basis to the less powerful, but far more numerous, Astartes who made-up the bulwark of the armed force the Emperor used to launch the Great Crusade.
• Super-Soldier: Primarchs were first developed to be superhuman warriors and other considerations were secondary to that.
• Superior Successor: Before the Primarchs, the Emperor's first attempt at making a transhuman general was a being known as the Angel. While he was even more powerful than any of his later "brothers", the Angel was obsessively loyal to the Emperor and mentally unstable, making him violently hostile to anyone he deemed unworthy of the Emperor. His fanaticism eventually led him to slaughter the population of a hive city in a single night and continue rampaging until he scoured the entire planet it was on of life. When he learned of this, the Emperor deemed the Angel a threat to all of humanity and had his insane creation sealed in a specially warded stasis coffin. He deliberately designed the Primarchs after him to be far weaker, but much more mentally stable and less likely to turn on humanity as a whole. It worked. Mostly.
• Thunder Hammer: Thunder Hammers are popular weapons for Primarchs. Ferrus Manus's is called Forgebreaker (which is given to Perturabo after Ferrus Manus became shorter by a head). Vulkan, being a master smith and craftsman, has several, one called Thunderhead and another called Dawnbreaker.
• Training the Peaceful Villagers: Several of the Primarchs led the citizens of their home planets in defeating threats like dangerous wildlife, oppressive governments, or invading Xenos. Mortarion and Vulkan were most notable for rallying the humans on their worlds to become warriors in defense of their homes and families.
• Uncertain Doom: In the past this was almost universal for the loyalists. The only ones who weren't missing were confirmed kills (Sanguinius, Ferrus Manus). Now however, the Primarchs have begun to return, and things are becoming increasingly less uncertain.
• Universally Beloved Leader: Generally, at least as far as their own legions were concerned, the Primarchs were adored and borderline worshipped. They weren't just commanders - they were fathers. Their word was absolute and their orders were infallible. Even the highest commanders of the legion tended to Squee (in a tough, manly way) at the thought of being talked to by their Primarch. There were a handful of aversions - most strikingly Angron and Curze - but most of the Primarchs were considered the heart and soul of their legions.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Leman Russ and Lion El'Jonson had a violent altercation over a Kill Steal by the latter; though it worsened relations between them, they still considered themselves brothers, and Russ himself had eventually realized the foolishness of the fight... though his self-deprecating outburst of laughter was misinterpreted by El'Jonson as mockery, earning Russ a punch that knocked him out cold for hours. That said, the confrontation became the basis for a bitter feud between their legions, though recent events imply that they have reconciled.
• Warrior Prince: By the time the Emperor found the Primarchs, most of them had united their homeworlds or overthrown its corrupt rulers. Some of whom met the Emperor while they were in the final stages of their conquest or rebellions.
• Weapon-Based Characterization: All of the Primarchs had unique and powerful weapons, detailed below.
  • Fitting his brutal nature, Angron originally wielded a massive two-handed chainaxe called Widowmaker that was destroyed during the Night of the Wolf (an altercation between the Space Wolves and World Eaters). He then replaced it with another massive two-handed chainaxe he named Brazentooth. To cement the alliance between the World Eaters and the Word Bearers during the Heresy, Angron presented Brazentooth to Lorgar as a gift. It was then lost after the Word Bearer ship it was on blew up. Angron then wielded a pair of chainaxes named Gorefather and Gorechild. Though they were damaged during the Battle of Amatura, Khârn would later have Gorechild repaired for his personal use. Similarly, Leman Russ wielded a powerful axe named the Axe of Helwinter.
  • The second of Horus's two weapons was Worldbreaker, a Power Maul gifted to him by the Emperor that acted as both a weapon and a symbol of his authority as the Warmaster. Lorgar's signature weapon was the Illuminarum, a power maul that was forged for him by Ferrus Manus and which could easily send Guilliman flying.
  • Lion El'Jonson had one called the Lion Sword. Leman Russ also had a Cool Sword of his own called Mjalnar, a sword lined with the teeth of a Fenrisian Kraken. Rogal Dorn had a massive chainsword called Storm's Teeth; he also had another one that he shattered after the Siege of Terra, its shards forged into the Sword of the High Marshal and replaced by the Sword of Sebastus. Fulgrim had Fireblade, made for him by Ferrus Manus. Roboute Guilliman had the Gladius Incandor. For their part, Sanguinius wielded the Blade Encarmine. Jaghatai Khan had the White Tiger Dao.
  • Sanguinius also wielded the Spear of Telesto and Alpharius the Pale Spear.
  • Vulkan used Dawnbringer, a war-hammer too heavy for any but a Primarch to wield that also contained a personal teleportation device. Ferrus Manus favoured Forgebreaker, forged for him by Fulgrim, which was later wielded by Perturabo.
  • Roboute Guilliman's Hand of Dominion, which combined with his strength could bring down Titans.
  • Mortarion's is a huge Sinister Scythe called Silence, which completed his Grim Reaper look, and his sidearm The Lantern.
  • The first of Horus's two weapons was The Talon of Horus, a Lightning Claw that was later used by Abaddon. Corvus Corax wielded the Panoply of the Raven Lord, which included a pair of Lightning Claws along with an energised whip. Konrad Curze preferred a pair of comparatively smaller, wrist-mounted Lightning Claws named Mercy and Forgiveness.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy:
  • It shows up the most clearly in the Horus Heresy series with at least half of the 18 Primarchs with Konrad Curze feeling like he's becoming evil for the Emperor and Fulgrim, when Horus tells him that the Emperor will become a god and dispose of them, responds that he has longed for the Emperor's love and respect.
• Where I Was Born and Razed: Wrecking one's home planet for an actual (or even perceived) failure or slight is not unique to Traitor Primarchs as Caliban would attest.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Some of the Primarchs worried that they themselves (and their Legions) would face this when the Crusade eventually ended - after all, what good were superhuman generals and warriors in peacetime? While some of them had hobbies outside of warfare and encouraged their Astartes to do the same, most of them did not. What the Emperor had planned is a mystery, but there was a massive underground cavern beneath the Imperial Palace designated as quarters for the Primarchs, with apartments for each of them. Whether those would be living quarters or more akin to a Gilded Cage is unknown.

The Lost Primarchs

Primarchs II and XI

[ALL RECORDS EXPUNGED FROM LIBRARY - ORDER ORIGINATION UNKNOWN]

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• Adventure-Friendly World: These unknown Primarchs are another facet in the vast variance of the Warhammer 40,000 universe that lets players simply fill it in however they want.
• The Artifact: In the early editions, the 30th millennium was portrayed as a long lost age of myth and legend similar to how the Age of Strife is depicted. The disappearance of the II and XI Legions were created to add to the mystery of the era. This changed once Games Workshop decided to turn the 30th millennium into a game setting and write dozens of novels explaining almost everything that happened during the time period. However, the disappearance of the Lost Primarchs was chosen to remain unexplained and they remain one of the biggest elephants in the room, with everyone refusing to talk about them even after the Traitor Legions surpassed whatever crimes they could have committed.
• Empty Chair Memorial: The closest thing they'll get to acknowledgement. Roboute at one point has a table set out with chairs for ''all' the Primarchs, II and XI's included, unadorned and with the acknowledgement that they're never going to show up. He maintains the places must be kept anyhow.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: According to The Chamber at the End of Memory, the reason why no one ever discusses the lost Primarchs and Legions in depth is because Rogal Dorn and Roboute Guilliman ordered Malcador the Sigillite to modify the memories of everyone who had met them, so they could not recall specifically who they were or what happened to them, only vague and unimportant details (such as Dorn remembering that he was one of the Primarchs who had actually met them). It's also what ultimately happened to those Legions' leftover Space Marines, although they were spared their Primarchs' fates.
• Hypocrite: Apparently Fulgrim thought the Second Primarch was one, for accusing Fulgrim of hubris when he sought to deploy the (at the time severely below-strength) Emperor's Children Legion on their own for the first time. It's unclear if Fulgrim was referring to his hubris, the state of his Legion at the time, or both.
• Make an Example of Them: The Primarchs spoke of their missing brothers rarely but when they did it was often to warn each other and themselves of how not even they were above punishment from the Emperor.
• My Greatest Failure: At least one of them appears to have been this to the Imperium and the Primarch Project, as Malcador describes the circumstances leading to one Primarch's UnPersoning as disgraceful in The Last Council. In The First Heretic, the actions of the XI Primarch were also said to have led to a "shameful future" for the Word Bearers; a handful of Word Bearers considered undoing this future by murdering the Primarch in his infancy, when they were apparently sent back to see the Primarchs being cultivated in the Emperor's gene-labs (it's unclear if this was a Vision Quest or true Time Travel).
• Redemption Equals Death: Rick Priestly once suggested that the Lost Primarchs being purged and removed from all records and memories could have potentially been a reward rather than a punishment. That they managed to redeem themselves for whatever crimes, if any, that they had committed but their transgressions were too large simply pardon so their absolution came in the form of being forgotten alongside all their crimes, unlike the Traitor Legions who remain unforgiven and forever hated and scorned by the Imperium. However, Priestly also made sure to reconfirm that the Missing Primarchs were never meant to have a definitive explanation and that this was but one theory he had come up with for them.
• Riddle for the Ages: Shrug of God says there's no intention of ever resolving this mystery, though we have been given some hints to work with.
  • The Space Wolves acquired the sobriquet "The Emperor's Executioners," for having fought other Space Marines even before the Horus Heresy (the conflicts with the World Eaters and Dark Angels also being called the most infamous). It should be noted that it's rumored they nominated themselves, and is believed that they are trying to justify why there is a Legion such as the Space Wolves amongst the Astartes (taking the role, rather than being designed for it).
    • According to The Wolftime, they apparently did go after the XI Legion, for an act of betrayal that they were unwittingly manipulated into. Naturally, it doesn't say who manipulated the XI, nor what happened after the Wolves went after them.
  • In the Regimental Standard (an in-universe (though satirical) military publication, similar to the real world Army Times), a copy of The Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer 's section of medical treatment of a lasgun wound was mistakenly replaced with a concise history of the Rangdan Xenocides, including direct mention of the unknown Legions fighting alongside the Solar Auxilia during the campaign. About the only information that could be potentially gleaned from it is that based on the spacing, at least one of them had a really long name. Likewise, in The Horus Heresy Book Seven, it is hinted that one or perhaps both of the missing Legions were lost during the Rangdan Xenocides. It should be noted that the Space Wolves legion also took part in the Rangdan Xenocides.
  • Sanguinius worries in Fear to Tread that his legion will be marked as genetically compromised and become "a third empty plinth beneath the roof of the Hegemon" on Terra.
  • There's some in-universe speculation that the Ultramarines received a large influx of recruits during the Great Crusade, perhaps from a legion that no longer officially exists. This would also explain the deviation amongst some of the Ultramarines' successor chapters. However, when this theory is suggested by a member of the Word Bearers Legion in The First Heretic, another Word Bearer is quick to shoot it down as petty rumour-mongering.
  • There is also mention that the Adepta Sororitas were ordered to destroy a great amount of Space Marines quickly at some point; it is entirely possible that these were the members of one of the missing Legions. This also implies that said Legion was Chaos-aligned since the Sororitas specialise in fighting heretics. This was later subject to Retcon, since the Sororitas were only founded thousands of years after the Crusade and thus long after whatever it is that happened to the missing legions.
  • It's also worth noting that an official illustration of Malcador shows his throne as being adorned with a pair of skulls labeled with the numbers of the two missing legions, suggesting that he had some kind of involvement in their disappearance.
  • Clonelord mentions that one of the two Lost Primarchs (presumably the Second, given the known timeline of events) visited a Necron Monolith at one point during the early years of the Great Crusade, prior to being lost. It is unknown if this had any connection to his ultimate fate.
  • There are hints that the Lost Primarchs may have been killed during or after a war known as the Rangdan Xenocides, which was so terrible it cost many Expeditionary Fleets and dozens of Titan Legions, and required the Emperor to open the Noctis Labyrinthus on Mars.
  • The Chamber at the End of Memory gives a few hints as to what happened:
    • Whatever led to the Primarchs' disappearances was so disastrous that Malcador suppressed the relevant memories in all who had known the two lost Primarchs, save for himself and the Emperor, at Rogal Dorn and Roboute Guilliman's request.
    • Dorn was involved, and when he learns just a partial bit of the truth, trying to find out why he gave the order, what he sees scares him, and makes the Horus Heresy look light and fluffy by comparison, and that the Imperium would already be a wreck if they hadn't been scoured.
    • Also, Malcador confirms that whatever fate befell the Lost Primarchs was not shared by their Legions' Space Marines, who were apparently mind-wiped and put to good use somewhere else, although where they ended up is not mentioned.
    • All of this happens after Rogal Dorn discovers a chamber with two doors, marked 'II' and 'XI', in an off-limits section of the Imperial Palace. While he never manages to open them, Malcador tells him that only grief awaits him if he should do so. Whether the rooms were those Primarchs' tombs, prisons, or something else entirely is unknown, although Dorn says that the chamber is "only a tomb now" when he leaves (although this is only after the memories Malcador re-awakened in him have faded away again; he may also have been using the term metaphorically).
• The Stoic: Fulgrim describes the Second Primarch (who appears to have still been active and un-purged at the time) as being quiet, contemplative, and humourless, while recalling a recent encounter with him in the novel Fulgrim: The Palatine Phoenix. So far, this is the only insight we have into the personalities of either of the Lost Primarchs.
• Un-person: The Primarchs of the II and XI legions were at some point completely expunged from Imperium record, and the reasons why are completely unknown. They are alluded to a couple of times in the Horus Heresy books, but whenever they are the person who brought them up is very quickly reminded not to talk about it.
• You Have Failed Me: Roboute Guilliman explained to an Ecclesiarchy priest that the two Primarchs "failed" in some way, which led to whatever happened to them.

Loyalist Primarchs

Lion El'Jonson, Primarch of the Dark Angels

In warfare, preparation is the key. Determine that which your foe prizes the most. Then site your heavy weapons so that they overlook it. In this way, you may be quite sure that you shall never want for targets.

Historic

Lion El'Jonson was scattered to the planet Caliban, a verdant world near the Eye of Terror where a knighthood called the Order battled against mutated monsters. A knight named Luther found this wild child in the jungles and brought him back to his fortress-monastery, where El'Jonson quickly assimilated Caliban's culture and climbed the ranks of the Order. Soon he was its Supreme Grand Master and the Lion had cleansed Caliban of beasts, while jealousy grew in his friend Luther.

When the Emperor found El'Jonson, he was appointed Primarch of the First Legion, which became the Dark Angels. The Lion brought many from the Order into its ranks, but while they fought in the Great Crusade, Luther and others were sent back to serve as Caliban's garrison. The Dark Angels campaigned against the Night Lords but otherwise played only a marginal role in the Horus Heresy, and El'Jonson arrived at Terra too late to save the Emperor. In the aftermath, he and his fleet returned to Caliban, only to be fired upon by Luther and the Dark Angels who remained there.

Enraged beyond rational thought, the Lion dueled his former mentor while the Dark Angels blew apart their homeworld in an orbital bombardment. In the end, Caliban was destroyed, the rebellious Fallen Angels were scattered across space and time by a Warp rift, and the Primarch disappeared. Unbeknownst to his followers, El'Jonson was taken by the Watchers in the Dark, and slumbers in a hidden chamber deep within the Dark Angels' fortress-monastery, making him one of the two loyalist Primarchs known for certain to still be alive, alongside Roboute Guilliman.

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• Aloof Leader, Affable Subordinate: Lion's poor social skills meant that he had to rely on the more sociable Luther to handle interpersonal matters.
• Aloof Older Brother: The Lion was seen as a stern older brother by most of the Primarchs. They respected him, but few would want to deal with him personally due to his unrelenting and unforgiving nature.
• Ambiguously Evil: Some of the Fallen accuse Lion of having waited out the Heresy to see who would win. He didn't. He was fighting Konrad Curze and helping Sanguinius and Guilliman rebuild Ultramar.
• Archenemy: Konrad Curze. It all started when Curze slandered El'Jonson, leading to a brawl that had Curze almost strangling The Lion to death. Out of all the Traitor Primarchs, El'Jonson hated Curze the most.
• Berserk Button:
  • Traitors, since he prizes honor and loyalty. He despised all of the Traitor Primarchs and especially Curze, and his rage was terrifying to even his own men when he discovered Luther's treachery.
  • Don't ever question his own loyalty if you value your life. Konrad Curze and Kairos Fateweaver both painfully figured this out when they separately tried tempting him to Chaos.
• Beware the Quiet Ones: Among the quietest Primarchs, he is also among the top 3 primarchs in number of military victories (rivaled only by Dorn and only surpassed by Horus), he broke Curze's back, unleashed holy hell on the traitors within his legion, made sure the traitor legions had no place to call home after the Siege of Terra and unnerves even other Primarchs.
• Broken Ace: He's a larger-than-life supreme commander and strategist, but like his God Emperor father, his superb status made him unable to empathize or understand others not as skilled as himself and vice versa. Despite all his skill and power, Lion carries immense feelings of loneliness and misery because of how singular he believes he is.
• Combat Pragmatist: Lion gets a cheap shot in on Konrad Curze by stabbing him through the gut with his sword during the meeting on the planet Tsagualsa where Konrad invited him to parley. This was after Konrad Curze made the slight of insulting the Dark Angels by calling their future loyalty into question.
• Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: When Kairos Fateweaver tries tempting El'Jonson into the service of the Ruinous Powers on behalf of Tzeentch, El'Jonson stabs him and sarcastically asks if he had foreseen that. Essentially, the Lion by proxy tells Tzeentch to piss off.
• The Dreaded: Notable, in that he wasn't just feared by beings less powerful than him, but by many of the other primarchs as well.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: The Lion is not traditionally ambitious. Rather, he has a deep sense of entitlement due to his station, lineage, and accomplishments. Slights towards these, both real and imagined, are quick to rouse his wrath and cause him to veer into Entitled Bastard territory.
• Failure Knight: Respected if not liked by his brothers, trusted by the Emperor, and feared by the enemies of the Imperium, the venerated Lion brought about the Breaking of Caliban almost entirely through his own poor decisions and how he frequently took the feelings of those close to him for granted. While all Astartes legions suffered their fair share of internal strife and outright traitors, El'Jonson's ruin stands apart with just how many of his Dark Angels chose to or were tricked into turning against him. So while the likes of Rogal Dorn and Vulkan vanished battling enemies of mankind, the First Primarch spent his last moments in the 31st Millennium clashing with an army of his own sons due in large part to a terrible misunderstanding.
• Fatal Flaw: Pride. The Lion saw himself as the greatest of the Primarchs and held himself according. His inability to work with others without deference on their part and his easily wounded ego are two of the largest issues Guilliman faced in the Imperium Secundus. He considered himself the only worthy candidate for Warmaster, thought of himself as the Emperor's "True" Executioner, and demanded position of primacy within Guilliman's Imperium Secundus.
• Foil: He and Leman Russ both spend their childhoods alone in the wilderness and grew to be some of the most loyal and prideful of the sons of the Emperor. While Russ would grow to be loud and open, El'Jonson would be cold and secretive. Their shared pride as warriors would see the two clash several times. Fittingly, the two are associated with wild canines and felines respectively.
• Good Cannot Comprehend Evil: One of his greatest tactical blunders during the Horus Heresy was attacking the home worlds of the Traitor Primarchs rather than rush to aid the Emperor, gambling on them abandoning the Siege of Terra to confront him. Corrupted as they were, his heretical brothers were beyond such sentiment and largely ignored the Lion's bait.
• Hidden Depths: In his Lord of the First novel, he confided in the Emperor that his only real regret as his Primarch that he and his Legion could not provide any constructive contributions to the Imperium, lacking the capacity to excel at building or inspiring that their counterparts possessed. The Emperor assured El'Jonson that the services the Dark Angels provided as a powerful strike force were valid, however destructive they may be.
• History Repeats: Shortly after the Siege of Terra, the Primarch most like the Emperor suffers a similar ruin with the Breaking of Caliban. As it was with Horus, the Lion is betrayed by his closest lieutenant in the form of Luther who likewise fell to Chaos, and an entirely avoidable schism amidst the Dark Angels brought about by his own neglect and lack of communication with his sons ensues. In the aftermath, a wounded El'Jonson is left in a deathless state for thousands of years within the Rock akin to the maimed Emperor becoming trapped on the Golden Throne. However, while the Emperor was able to protect Terra from the Ruinous Powers, Caliban was destroyed in the civil war against the Fallen with much of its remains being repurposed by Vashtorr as his Planet Spaceship Wyrmwood.
• Honor Before Reason: While he was very much a Combat Pragmatist, when Lion felt his honor was besmirched or he was sufficiently enraged he would throw tactics aside to fight alone when he would better be served fighting alongside allies. When Konrad Curze was rampaging through the lower decks of his ship during the Heresy when the Dark Angels were heading to Ultramar, the Lion ordered the decks sealed and went hunting himself instead of preparing kill teams to find the traitor, and later would grow obsessed with hunting down Konrad on Ultramar when he escaped.
• Horrible Judge of Character: Acknowledged to be one in-universe. For all his tactical brilliance, El'Jonson was horrible at reading people and discerning if they could be trusted or not. He relied on Luther to make those judgments for him until Luther was "exiled" back to Caliban.
• King in the Mountain: During the war on Caliban, the Lion was on the surface, in the first Rock, dueling with Luther as the warpstorm that tore apart the planet erupted. El'Jonson was listed as MIA, but the Angels believe he will return one day. In truth, El'Jonson has been comatose and healing in a secret chamber deep in the second Rock, the Dark Angels's current Fortress Monastery. He has been tended by the Watchers in the Dark, and was presumably rescued and secreted in the chamber by them in the first place.
• Knight in Shining Armor: Both in backstory and deed — El'Jonson's code of personal honor meant that he was the only Primarch that Guilliman said he could look up to, who similarly thought that the Lion was the only possible contender for Warmaster other than Horus.
• Lightning Bruiser: Almost supernaturally nimble and deft in his movements, capable of delivering flying knee strikes, sliding kicks, and even shoulder throws while fully armored and maintaining much of his momentum.
• Like Father, Like Son: He's noted as being the Primarch who most takes after his father in personality, for better and for worse.
• Lonely at the Top: Lion held himself to an incredibly high standard that few people could meet, even amongst his fellow Primarchs. This larger-than-life sensation he typically gave off tended to isolate him from others and prevent him from being able to relate to anyone. It was implied by Lion himself that he carries immense feelings of loneliness because of how singular he believes he is.
• Master Swordsman: The Lion could draw and strike with his blade faster than Konrad Curze could react. Horus once theorized that the Lion was unbeatable, sword to sword, against any of the other Primarchs and El'Jonson proved this claim had merit.
• Meaningful Name: Translates to "The Lion, Son of the Forest". He has another one in the implicit naming of his Legion, the Dark Angels. He was the First Primarch, and a prideful, inhuman, genocidal and brutally vindictive, not entirely unlike the Angel, one of the Emperor's first attempts at creating a general.
  • Out-of-universe, he's transparently named after the 19th-century English poet Lionel Johnson.
• No Social Skills: Without Luther by his side, he was socially hopeless. He didn't understand people and they didn't understand him. Whereas Guilliman could lead and Sanguinius could inspire, all the Lion actually could do in Secundus was kill enemies.
• The Peter Principle: Though a fine leader and general, he relied heavily on the Emperor to provide directives to safeguard and improve the Imperium. When he was cut off from his orders during the Horus Heresy, he struggled to collaborate with the other Loyalist forces around him as his instinctual notions that he and the Dark Angels should be in charge as the first of the Primarchs and legions clashed with his awareness that they lacked the expertise for it. Likewise, his reluctance to view his brothers as trustworthy equals caused him to pursue hasty, short-term goals on his own like his disastrous hunt for Konrad Curze on Ultramar.
• Pragmatic Hero: He was by far the most ruthless Primarch on the loyalist side. He was also more brutal than most (if not all) traitor Primarchs. He was willing to blow up planets, innocent people and all, if it meant that he would destroy his enemies. The fact that Mortarion admitted to admiring him in Lords of Silence speaks volumes.
• The Quiet One: The most reclusive primarch, preferring to let his adopted brother/best friend Luther do all the socializing.
• Refusal of the Second Call: Despite having been at the Imperium Secundus, he didn't join his loyalist brothers in reinforcing Terra, and instead returned to Caliban under unknown circumstances. He saw that the Angels he had left at home had turned traitor, and started his own private war.
• The Rival: To Leman Russ. The two butted heads frequently, especially over a particular incident that led to a nearly two-day-long brawl between them that ended with Lion cold-cocking Russ, which became the basis of the honor duels that the Dark Angels and Space Wolves still fight. Despite their friction, they both agreed that the Emperor naming Horus as Warmaster was confirmation of his being the favorite son.
• Social Climber: Lion was very ambitious and wanted to be Warmaster. He got his wish when Guilliman made him Lord Protector of Imperium Secundus. On the other hand, he didn't care for any kind of recognition or praise, it was all just about the position.
• The Stoic: He wasn't a very emotional person.
• The Strategist: He was an extremely good tactician, to the point that some people consider him to have been better than Horus himself.
• Sudden Name Change: Used to be named Lyyn Elgonsen. This was changed fairly early.
• Token Evil Teammate: Of the Loyalists, the Lion is the most vindictive and willing to commit atrocities, such as going on his own genocide-spree during the Horus Heresy on the homeworlds of the Traitor Primarchs. He was also the most inhuman loyalist. Empathy and sympathy just weren't a factor for him, so he was more than willing to overlook collateral damage and make hard choices. Indeed, it is commonly theorized that the true role of the Lion and his legion was to be the remorseless killers who erased threats to the Imperium.
• Tranquil Fury: In direct contrast to Leman Russ. It wasn't easy to get Jonson riled up, but it was even harder to calm him back down.
• Undying Loyalty: Many Primarchs questioned his loyalty to the Emperor, but in the end he turned out to be maybe the most loyal Primarch of all due to recognizing the competency and benevolent intent of his father after much careful study. The Ruinous Powers couldn't tempt him with anything (as Kairos painfully discovered). As he tells Curze "loyalty is its own reward".
• The Unfettered: The Lion was one of the most ruthless of the Primarchs. He would order entire worlds scoured of life without hesitation if he thought it would achieve a needed goal. He did just that to the homeworlds of the Traitor Primarchs in retribution after the Horus Heresy.
• Wild Child: The Lion spent his childhood alone in the forests of Caliban before he was found by other humans. By all rights that jungle and its Chaos-twisted Beasts should have killed him. The jungle failed. Some, like Roboute Guilliman, noted that this brutal childhood left the Lion with an aggressive, paranoid aspect to his personality that never left him.

Current

"I will teach them to fear the darkness in which they dwell, and to dread the shadows they believe their allies, for there is no greater terror hunting the stygian void than the Lion of Caliban."

After the Arks of Omen began plundering and pillaging the galaxy as part of Vashtorr's mysterious agenda, the Arkifane launched a failed raid on the Rock, invoking the vengeance of the Dark Angels, and causing the Watchers in the Dark to finally turn the Lion loose once more.

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• Adventures In Coma Land: Arks of Omen reveals that while his body was inert while it healed, his mind and spirit were prowling a phantasmal realm resembling the forests of lost Caliban for thousands of years, keeping his fighting skills sharp even as he slumbered.
• Ancestral Weapon: El'Jonson now carries the Emperor's Shield, previously wielded by his father.
• Anti-Magic: Besides being a very powerful protective plate that can reflect incoming blows back at their attacker, the Emperor's Shield can create a smaller version of the aegis field that protects the Imperial Palace from external Chaos incursions, making it similarly anathema to the forces of the Warp. Its power is shown off when Lion was able to banish his brother Angron with repeated blows from the shield.
• Arthurian Legend: The Lion: Son of the Forest is heavy with Arthurian motifs such as the Lion returning to the Imperium in its time of greatest need, pulling his new power sword Fealty from a stone, and battling a corrupted scion of his in the form of Seraphax.
• BFS: His new Power Sword, Fealty. Any blade wielded by a Primarch will count as this and one of his Watchers in the Dark carrying the scabbard emphasizes how huge the sword itself is.
• Bling of War: His model includes elaborate armor with gold linings and a helmet with elaborate wings that would make the high elves in Warhammer Fantasy proud.
• Break the Haughty: It's implied his failure to save the Emperor immediately followed by Luther's betrayal and the breaking of Caliban are responsible for his new outlook. The combined failures and his subsequent shock and trauma were so great that they forced him to seriously reconsider his self-perception and methods.
• Came Back Strong: His skills are none the worse for wear after his awakening, and he now has the advantage of both the Emperor's Shield and his forestwalking abilities which prove to be instrumental in his efforts to bring order and peace to the Dark Imperium, especially in the fight against Angron.
• Cincinnatus: Frequently reiterates that he views mankind as his Protectorate, and while he may lead them in battle and other crucial federal affairs, he does not wish and has never desired to rule over them.
• David vs. Goliath: How the battle between himself and Angron goes in "Arks of Omen"; despite his power as a Primarch, he's vastly outmatched in a battle of sheer strength against his brother who has long since become a Daemon Primarch and practically one of Khorne's greatest champions — but true to his skill as one of the greatest (if not the greatest) duelists in the galaxy, the Lion is able to use his wit to outsmart and overwhelm his brother and finally allowing him to destroy Angron's corporeal form.
• Elderly Immortal: Unlike Guilliman, who didn't age due to being trapped in a stasis field to keep him from dying, El'Jonson is visibly aged since he was in a deep sleep. He looks like a normal man in his 60s at least, his once golden hair has faded to white, and his hairline has receded.
• Feeling Their Age: Downplayed after aging for 10,000 years while asleep. During Lion: Son of the Forest he expresses the sentiment that he's not moving as fast as he used to. This is evidently relative, as just prior to this he killed a squad of Chaos Terminators in thirty seconds and still moves faster than Chaos Space Marines can even react. It also becomes apparent that this is more about the Lion shaking off his long slumber and getting used to fighting in realspace again, culminating in defeating Angron in single combat. For comparison, Angron had previously torn through other, much younger Dark Angels like weeds.
• Fertile Feet: A side effect of the Lion's Forestwalk is that undergrowth sprouts around the point he arrives, growing out of ferrocrete and metal, even flesh and bone, before dissolving to nothing a while later. His own personal chambers on the Rock are thick with such growth.
• Fish out of Temporal Water: Much like Roboute, the Lion wakes up in a vastly different world and it's quite a shock for him after living during the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy. He's particularly disturbed at the existence of the Ecclesiarchy and the culture worshipping the Emperor and Primarchs, and has to be told of the Great Rift.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: Forestwalk can only teleport the Lion in the tabletop, but he can bring other people with him in story materials.
• He's Back!: The Dark Angels, upon hearing of the return of the Lion, go completely silent in shock even as war rages around them. He then charges the fields of his warped homeworld and proceeds to show his brother Angron exactly what 10,000 years of vengeance feels like.
• Hypocritical Heartwarming: Mourns the disappearance of Leman Russ while also calling his vanished brother an "obnoxious savage" in the same breath.
• In the Hood: His model has two options to wear either a hood or hood over his helmet.
• Irony: One of his primary objectives after awakening was to rush to Terra to meet his father. He later encounters an aspect of the Emperor in "Mirror Caliban" who has taken the form of a wizened and wounded human king, but the Lion is too callow and stringent in his thinking to recognize him.
• Knight Errant: What he as essentially become to the Imperium Nihilus, thanks in part to his new forestwalking power: A monster-slaying knight who travels from one world-in-peril to another to help the locals save the day, then leaves almost as soon as the threat is dealt with; or, at least, when the locals can reasonably be expected to defend themselves from what's left.
• Knight in Shining Armor: Ironically, his much greater emphasis on protecting others in the modern era causes him to play this much more conventionally straight than he did during the Great Crusade.
• Knightly Sword and Shield: Complimenting his knightly armor and Took a Level in Kindness, he is armed with his power sword "Fealty" and the Emperor's Shield.
• Manly Facial Hair: His beard has only gotten more prominent since his time asleep.
• My Greatest Failure: He took not being there for the Emperor during the Siege of Terra hard — and things only got worse with Luther's betrayal and the breaking of Caliban. Fortunately he's had enough introspection to realize how much of it was his fault, and his new mindset along with redeeming the Fallen who never fell to Chaos is part of his resolve to be better.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Most fans have poked fun at the idea that his current appearance looks to be based on Charles Dance. Fitting, considering how he played another prideful noble with a lion motif. ^note  Others says he looks more like James Cosmo or Liam Cunningham
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Barring meeting with Zabriel and taking a Traitor Marine outpost, the Lion's rallying of Loyalist forces on Camarth and liberating the planet with them happens mostly offscreen in The Lion: Son of the Forest.
• Older and Wiser: While he has spent much of the past ten thousand years asleep, the Lion has come to recognize his past flaws and strive to do better in the present. He acknowledges that banishing the Fallen to Caliban sowed the seeds for their rebellion, informing his decision to see those who haven't fully embraced Chaos redeemed as the Risen, and where once he stormed the galaxy putting traitor homeworlds to the torch he now focuses his efforts on protecting the Imperium's citizens.
• The Redeemer: For the Fallen; well, the ones who haven't fallen to Chaos, anyway. Those ones he kills on sight, or else leaves in the hands of the Interrogator Chaplains, but the rest he's been going around and bringing back into the fold, recognizing that most of them weren't traitors to begin with. Azrael is less than thrilled, but he's hardly about to talk back to his gene father — let alone the man who just pulverized Khorne's personal antichrist.
• Shield Bash: His duel with Angron concludes with the Lion repeatedly introducing his fallen brother's face against the Emperor's shield until he is banished.
• The Slow Path: Compared to Guilliman. Roboute spent the last ten thousand years in a stasis field, while the Lion got knocked into a ten-millenia coma, meaning his body actually dealt with some sort of passage of time.
• Silver Fox: He's much aged from the Heresy, but is still fairly good looking and with his beard neatly trimmed and hair slicked back looks like quite the distinguished older gentleman.
• The Squire: He is accompanied by two Watchers in the Dark, one carrying his sword's scabbard and the other carrying a scepter.
• Stop Worshipping Me: Downplayed. He's very uncomfortable upon learning that the Emperor and Primarchs are worshipped as gods after living in an era defined by the Imperial Truth. He eventually decides that if the humans want to pray to someone, better it be him that Chaos, and passively allows their worship while not actively encouraging it. He still refuses to deal with the Ecclesiarchy and ignores them entirely.
• Sympathy for the Devil: When El'Jonson finally confronts Angron he can only feel a mixture of pity and disgust at the Chaos-warped, slavering beast his brother has been reduced to.
• Teleportation with Drawbacks: In-universe, the Lion's new Forestwalk ability allows him to employ a form of empyric travel to go teleport great distances, including those between star systems. Its shortcomings involve having to traverse a "Mirror Caliban" dimension before arriving at his destination - one that is loaded with hostile wildlife and what is implied to be shadowy avatars of the Chaos Gods themselves - and that it cannot be used rapidly or with great precision. This is reflected in the game, where its usage operates under a variant of Deep Strike rules, so it can't set him up anywhere less than 9 inches away from a particular enemy model.
• Thicker Than Water: Upon realizing how long has passed, the Lion grows increasingly distraught as he comes to believe he is the Last of His Kind, finally admitting to himself that he genuinely loved his family and misses his brothers. When he finds out that Roboute Guilliman still lives, he is truly happy and relieved knowing that he is not alone in the grim darkness of the far future.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Make no mistake, he's still an example of Good Is Not Nice; but compared to his Great Crusade days, he's become much more focused on saving and protecting the helpless, rather than just annihilating whatever perceived threats are nearby. Not that he doesn't do a lot of that too, mind.

Jaghatai Khan, Primarch of the White Scars

"Focus upon the foes you see before you, but be mindful always that the open plain can conceal an army. Guard your flanks, watch the horizon and remain mobile. In this way you will ever be the hunter and never the prey."

—Barutai Khan, reading from the writings of Jagatai Khan

The capsule carrying Jaghatai came to rest on the planet of Chogoris where he was taken in by the chief of a nomadic tribe living in the Empty Quarter, the steppes beyond the world's dominant empire. After his adopted father was slain by a rival tribe, Jaghatai exacted a horrible revenge against them before going on to unite all the other tribes under his rule and leading them in an assault against their more civilised neighbours that razed their cities and saw Jaghatai recognised as the Khan of Khans.

When the Emperor arrived six months later, Jaghatai recognised a ruler fit to unite humanity and took command of the V Legion, which he renamed the White Scars after the traditional facial scars of his adopted people. In addition to adopting the rituals and culture of Chogoris, the Legion also incorporated the tactics of Jaghatai's mounted warriors to become a powerful, highly-mobile army. The Great Khan was also instrumental, along with Sanguinius and Magnus the Red, in founding the Space Marine Legions' Librarius program, something that caused friction with several of his brothers, and eventually the Emperor. As such, Jaghatai and the White Scars kept to themselves, waging their own campaigns against xenos threats during the Great Crusade.

Records are sparse about the actions undertaken by the White Scars during the initial stages of the Horus Heresy, with some unconfirmed, and strenuously denied, reports of infighting within the Legion itself. What records do survive, however, indicate that Jaghatai rushed back to Terra in order to fight alongside the Emperor, leading the White Scars in many sallies from into Horus’ lines during the Siege of Terra, and pursued the traitors to the Eye of Terror when the siege failed. Jaghatai Khan led The White Scars for seventy years following the Heresy until the fateful Battle of Corusil V, where the Warhawk and his 1st Brotherhood disappeared while pursuing a Drukhari lord into the Webway.

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• Badass Biker: Raised amongst the horse mounted tribes of Chogoris, once reunited with the Emperor, Jaghatai successfully adapted his people's traditional method of warfare to Imperial technology. Fighting from the back of a prototype Sojutsu Pattern Voidbike, Jaghatai gained a fierce reputation as a mighty warrior who, during the Siege of Terra, once personally slew 40 Death Guard Marines in a single engagement.
• Barbarian Hero: Jaghatai Khan was a skilled but savage mounted warrior who excelled at hunting and had a backstory based on Ghengis Khan. Unlike his equally barbaric brother Leman Russ, however, Jaghatai was also a highly cultured individual who practiced calligraphy and poetry alongside tactics and extreme violence^*Ironically this makes him even more similar to the character that inspired this trope/stereotype.
• Beware the Honest Ones: The Chaos Primarchs included his two favorite brothers and was more welcoming to him than the Imperium. What they failed to take into account, was that Jaghatai took his oath to protect the people of the Imperium very seriously. Jaghatai stuck to his code and fought the traitors, regardless of his affections for Magnus and Horus.
• Blood Knight: It was said that the piece of the Emperor that Jaghatai inherited was his love of battle, and this was further nurtured by his upbringing amongst the warlike Chogorian tribes. Unlike many of his brothers, while he succeeded in conquering his home world, Jaghatai had no interest in actually ruling it and, when he was reunited with the Emperor, the Warhawk willingly joined the great crusade so that he could help conquer the galaxy for his father to rule.
• Cassandra Truth: Jaghatai was the only Primarch who sensibly criticized Magnus' reckless use of his psyker powers without it being couched in outright hatred of psykers as it was for Russ and Mortarion. Magnus' reckless behavior with his powers eventually had catastrophic consequences for the Imperium even before he fell to Chaos.
• The Chains of Commanding: A solitary individual at heart, Jaghatai cared for nothing more than the thrill of the hunt and the freedom of riding across the steppes, refusing to personally rule the empire he conquered before being reunited with the Emperor. This has led to some White Scars believing that their Primarch intentionally allowed himself to disappear into the webway, so that he could be free of his responsibilities and hunt eternally through a whole new dimension.
• Cultured Badass: Like the native tribes that raised him, Jaghatai mixed a barbaric love of battle with cultural pursuits such as calligraphy, poetry and strategy games. The Khan of Khans was a strong believer that warriors should do more than just train their bodies for war and encouraged his Astartes to develop their minds as well so that they could see the bigger picture of a battle beyond personal combat.
• Deadpan Snarker:
  Fulgrim: I heard from a contact on Mars, Jaghatai, that you do strange things to your ships.
  Jaghatai Khan: I heard you do strange things to your warriors.
• Fatal Flaw: Highly independent, Jaghatai was a loner who interacted little with his brothers except Magnus (himself distrusted by many Legions). As a result of this attitude, when the Horus Heresy erupted nobody really trusted him, as they were unsure which side he would eventually join.
• Hover Bike: One of Jaghatai's favoured mounts is the prototype Sojutsu Pattern Voidbike. Capable of true flight for a limited time and able to operate in space, the Voidbike was technically classed as a fighter craft and was far in advance of those ridden by rank-and-file Astartes.
• Humble Hero: For a given value of "hero". Jaghatai saw little value in bragging about his skills or seeking glory for glory's sake. While most of his brothers practically shouted their accomplishments and victories to the heavens, Jaghatai was content to keep his works and abilities in the background until they were needed.
• King in the Mountain: Shortly after the conclusion of the Horus Heresy, Jaghatai Khan and the entirety of the White Scars' 1st Brotherhood vanished into an Aeldari portal in pursuit of the leader of a Drukhari raiding force. While some members of the Chapter think that Jaghatai did this deliberately so that he could be free of his responsibilities to the Imperium, the majority of White Scars believe that the Khan of Khans is still fighting somewhere within the labyrinthine dimension of the webway, and will one day return to lead the Chapter once again.
• The Kirk: To Rogal Dorn's Spock and Sanguinius' Mccoy. Jaghatai saw it as his duty to save the people of Terra, numbers game be damned, but he was far less reluctant to sacrifice his men than Sanguinius was.
• Loners Are Freaks: The Khan's solitary, distant nature made his brothers distrustful of him as they had no frame of reference to predict his actions.
• Master Swordsman: Jaghatai was considered to be one of the three greatest blade masters of all the Primarchs, with only Lion El'Johnson and Fulgrim matching him in skill. In battle, Jaghatai fought with both speed and skill, and was equally effective whether he was fighting on foot or from the saddle of his voidbike.
• No Historical Figures Were Harmed: With his Mongolian appearance and his backstory involving uniting desperate tribes of horsemen to conquer a more advanced, city-based civilization, Jaghatai is based on the leaders of the historical Mongol Empire, particularly Genghis Khan and his family. His name is even an alternate spelling of Chagatai Khan, the hot-headed second son of Genghis Khan.
• Only Sane Man: Although the Khan and his legion had a reputation for being savages, he may very well have been the most levelheaded of the Primarchs. His status as an "outsider" gave him a unique perspective clear of the biases and misconceptions that so often clouded the vision of others in the Imperium, including his brothers and the Emperor himself. He saw the flaws in the Emperor's logic in regards to his Great Crusade, understood precisely why Magnus should not have been so reckless with the warp, gave Fulgrim a dressing-down in regards to his flaws and insecurities and correctly pointed out how Mortarion (the Primarch who hated psykers and sorcerers the most) was both directly and indirectly responsible for there being more psykers and sorcerers than ever before. And finally, he wasn't a dutiful son like Rogal or Gulliman and wasn't under any delusions that the Emperor was anything else than a genocidal tyrant - yet still he sided with the loyalists' cause because he was very much aware that chaos was far worse.
• The Quiet One: Due to being raised on the wide-open steppes of Chogoris, Jaghatai was known to be one of the more reclusive and independently minded Primarchs. While he wasn't rude and was very polite, he was very private and eschewed bragging, preferring to keep his cards close to his chest and rarely revealed his secrets to others. His love of battle over statesmanship also led to him becoming less engaged in the political controversy, intrigue and turmoil that went on prior to and during the Horus Heresy.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Due to his own independent spirit, and his battles against the tyrannical civilization that attempted to oppress his people on Chogoris, Jaghatai promoted his warriors on merit alone and was a lot more open to independent thought than some of his brothers, so long as they remained loyal to him. When returning to Chogoris after the Heresy, for example, many of his officers thought the garrison that had been left to guard the home world should have been punished for sending troops to defend neighbouring systems and therefore allow Drukhari raiders to enslave many of their own planet's tribesmen. Jaghatai refused, recognizing that the garrison had done the best they could with their limited numbers and actually applauded their independent spirit for doing as well as they had.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Jaghatai's background material mentions that, after his adopted father, Ong, was killed by a rival tribe, the young Primarch led the retaliatory assault against their village that resulted in the death of every man, woman and child in the enemy tribe so that he could bathe in their blood. This incident led to Jaghatai being known as a man of both honour and ruthlessness and set him on the path to uniting the disparate tribes of Chogoris.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Due to exposure to the shamanic superstitions of the tribesmen that raised him, Jaghatai recognized the value of those with psychic abilities to humanity and quietly campaigned for their acceptance in the Imperium as a whole. When the Emperor basically banned the use of Librarians through the Edict of Nikaea, the pragmatic Jaghatai ordered his Legion to ignore the prohibition and continue using psykers. As a result of this, the Legion was far better prepared to face daemonic threats during the Horus Heresy than many others.
• Spanner in the Works: In many ways, Jaghatai was this for the Horus Heresy. Due to being the Wild Card, nobody knew which side he was part of, and rather than blindly jump to conclusions, he chose to wait and assess the situation. In doing so, he avoided making mistakes that would have benefited either side of the conflict until he remained loyal. His loyalty to the Emperor was insanely important to the defense of Terra due to this, and if not for it, the siege would have ended poorly for the loyalists.
• Token Minority: Along with Vulkan, among the Primarchs. Every other Primarch is some variation of white or ambiguous race, with the exception of Magnus.
• Victory Is Boring: The Warhawk loved fighting more than winning and conquered his home world of Chogoris mainly for revenge against his enemies, not because he had any interest in creating an empire. Once he left to join the White Scars he let his domain fall back into warring nations.
• Wild Card: None of his brothers truly understood him, thanks to his quiet and distant nature. Nobody was entirely sure who Jaghatai would side with when the Horus Heresy broke out. In the end, despite Horus thinking he would be one of the easiest Primarchs to win over and the attempts of Magnus and Mortarion to sway him to the rebel side, the Warhawk stayed true to his oaths by joining the loyalists and fought to protect the Imperium at the Siege of Terra.

Leman Russ, Primarch of the Space Wolves

My enemies should know what's coming to greet them. It fixes them in the right mental place to be annihilated. I don't like to hide my strengths or my approach. I'd rather my foe knows the full, unimaginable fury that is about to descend upon him.

Leman Russ was raised by a she-wolf in the frozen wastes of Fenris, but was brought to civilization when a raiding party killed most of his pack and captured him. He grew to be garrulous and boisterous among his friends but a terrifying foe on the battlefield, and was eventually raised to the throne of Fenris. The Emperor, hearing tales of this mighty ruler, recognized him as a Primarch and traveled to Fenris, only to have Russ engage him in three contests — eating, drinking, and combat. Russ actually won the first two but was felled in the third, and swore fealty to the Emperor.

Under Russ' leadership the VI Legion, the Space Wolves, became known as "the Rout," a force that utterly devastated any foe that stood in their way. Despite his well-deserved reputation for berserker behaviour, Russ was a shrewd and cunning leader, someone Roboute Guilliman counted among the four "dauntless few" Primarchs who could be the most counted upon to serve the Emperor's will. The other three were Rogal Dorn, Sanguinius and Ferrus Manus. Russ' relationship with other Primarchs was more strained: he feuded with Lion El'Jonson, battled against Angron, and despised psykers such as Magnus the Red.

When the latter defied the Edict of Nikaea, the Space Wolves were sent to punish the Thousand Sons for their sorcerous ways and Russ broke Magnus the Red in personal combat. This campaign left the Space Wolves isolated from the great battles of the Horus Heresy, and to Russ' shame he was unable to return to Terra in time to save the Emperor. Two hundred years after the Heresy, Leman Russ abruptly departed for the Eye of Terror along with nearly all his Wolf Guard, promising that he would return to lead his chapter in its greatest and final conflict.

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• The Alcoholic: He and his legion are pretty much the only Space Marines to consume alcohol (though they have to imbibe it in quantities that would kill a normal human several times over in order to overcome their superhuman constitution). Notable in that when the Emperor first came to Fenris, Russ challenged him to a drinking contest and won!
  • He's particularly fond of Fenrisian Ale: a drink so potent that a drop of the stuff would kill an elephant. He drank it by the barrel.
• Anti-Magic: Leman's body and mind has a rather strong resistance towards the effects of The Warp and psychic Powers, more so than most of his brothers. However, he was not fully aware of this resistance until his battle against Magnus The Red during the Sacking of Prospero, where he was able to shrug off magical blows that would have injured or even killed some of the other Primarchs.
• Attack Animal: Russ was often accompanied into battle by Freki and Geri, the Wolf-kin of Russ, who would tear and bite at their brother's enemies with their razor-sharp teeth and claws. These two mighty Fenrisian wolves were the last of the pack that raised the young Primarch after his arrival on Fenris.
• Barbarian Hero:
  • Leman Russ was a barbarian king and hero in the Viking mould, whose Arch-Enemy was his Evil Sorcerer brother Magnus the Red. A lover of drinking, feasting, and fighting, Leman Russ is usually depicted with wild blond hair, fur covered Powered Armor, and a wild temper. In battle, the Wolf King is said to have wielded a large sword, axe, or spear, and fought with cunning and fury. Despite his argumentative and ill-tempered nature, Russ was well liked by many of his brother Primarchs, and was fiercely loyal to his God-Emperor father.
  • Interestingly, it is implied that Russ intentionally cultivated the persona of a crude, hard-drinking, boisterous, uneducated warrior-king as a way to hide his true abilities and intellect. Behind his savage and brutal mask, Russ was a cold, calculating warrior who held his savagery in check until the right moment to unleash it.
• Big Eater: As well as Big Drinker. Quite often, when the Emperor came incognito to one of his missing sons' homeworlds, he'd challenge them in different forms of duels, but these end in either draw or victory for the Emperor. Russ was the only one who beat the Emperor, although that was on eating and drinking. The Emperor then called Russ a glutton and a drunkard, which incensed Russ enough to challenge him in combat. The Emperor won handily enough.
• The Big Guy: Of the Loyalists, Vulkan was physically bigger and stronger, but Leman was the team's best and most eager combatant.
• Blind Obedience: One of Russ's biggest flaws was his endless trust in the Emperor. He refused to acknowledge his father's faults and couldn't imagine that the Emperor didn't return his familial affections. This caused several unnecessary fights between him and his brothers - and even eventually resulted in Magnus falling to Chaos.
• Blood Knight: A heroic example — he loves a good scrap.
• Boisterous Bruiser: He is one, but he tends to inflate this concept to help create the 'barbarian king' persona to others. There is some speculation that it's a coping mechanism to deal with some of the orders his Wolves have executed.
• Brutal Honesty: While perhaps not to the extent of Rogal Dorn, Russ was not known for his tact in conversation and tended to wear his emotions on his sleeve. If he didn't like something about you, he likely wouldn't hesitate to say it to your face.
• Character Development: He admits that he was tricked into attacking Magnus, and even goes so far as to say that the fact Chaos went that far shows that sorcerers DO have a place. He still feels that the way Magnus went about it was phenomenally reckless.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • Leman Russ earned such a brutal reputation during the Great Crusade that the Space Wolves were nicknamed "the Rout".
  • Leman himself was on the receiving end of one at the hands of Angron in a duel... which was exactly what Russ wanted: he would lose, but his warriors would kill Angron in return. Lorgar was baffled that Angron never understood the lesson Russ was trying to teach.
  • This even extends to the tabletop game where he massacres any other Primarch that gets in his way, even Horus and transfigured Lorgar. An example of Gameplay and Story Integration, since he and his Space Wolves were the Emperor's designated "Primarch and Space Marine" killers.
• Death World: His home of Fenris.
• Depending on the Artist: If he's a Fiery Redhead or blond and if he's clean-shaven or has a beard are the two most common back-and-forths regarding his appearance. Since Forge World's army book and model showcase present him as blonde and clean-shaven (as depicted in the pic above), it can be assumed there's finally a canonical answer to this.
• Does Not Like Magic: One of the most outspoken anti-psyker Primarchs, rivaled only by Mortarion. He insisted that his Rune Priests were completely different and channeled the natural forces of Fenris, even though they were functionally identical to the sorcerers of the Thousand Sons. Played with in that during the Horus Heresy he admits that Chaos's attempts to trick him prove that psykers do have a place; his problem is that Magnus was incredibly reckless with it.
• Drinking Contest: A significant part of the legend of Russ and the Emperor's first meeting, followed by an Eating Contest.
• Dual Wielding: The model and rules for Leman Russ in the Horus Heresy: Age of Darkness game, have the Wolf-King fighting with a pair of weapons, the Frostaxe Helwinter and Mjalnar, the sword of Balenight. Similarly to Horus, Leman can split his attacks freely between the two weapons, rather than being locked into only one per phase of the fight.
• The Dutiful Son: He took immense pride in being self-appointed as the Emperor's most loyal son. He was immensely valuable to the Great Crusade, obeyed any order from the Emperor without question and was one of the Primarchs none of the Traitors even considered attempting to sway to their side.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: In the first edition of the game, before the concept of Primarchs was introduced, Leman Russ was merely a commander of a Space Wolves. This also means that he is technically the first Primarch to be introduced in the franchise.
• Eating Contest: By this point the Emperor got annoyed, and accused Russ of proving only that the Wolf-King was the greater glutton.
• Fatal Flaw: His Undying Loyalty meant he never questioned his orders, which left him very easy to manipulate. Also, his lack of tact and understanding for others meant he was unpopular among his brothers.
• Fiery Redhead: Well, he's described as such in the books. Other times he's described as blond. The artwork doesn't help either.
• Find the Cure!: One of the theories put forward by the Space Wolves over the years for the reason he disappeared is that Russ is searching for the mythical Tree of Life to heal the Emperor of his wounds.
• Foil: He and Lion El'Jonson both spend their childhoods alone in the wilderness and grew to be some of the most loyal and prideful of the sons of the Emperor. While Russ would grow to be loud and open, El'Jonson would be cold and secretive. Their shared pride as warriors would see the two clash several times. Fittingly, the two are associated with wild canines and felines respectively.
• Jerkass: Russ had an extremely combative personality and of all the Primarchs only Angron was more prone to starting fights amongst his brothers. To wit, he fought with Magnus (over his use of sorcerers), Jaghatai Khan (over his founding of the Librarius program), Guilliman (over being asked to split up his legion), Angron (over his bloodthirsty way of waging war), and El'Jonson (see the Kill Steal entry below).
• Jerkass Has a Point: His suspicion of Magnus was partly grounded in the belief that Magnus wasn't using his psyker powers responsibly. This was vindicated when in his reckless usage of his psyker powers, Magnus (before he even fell to Chaos) did more damage to the budding Imperium than any of the Traitor Primarchs by that point by destroying the Emperor's webway project and forcing the Emperor to confine himself to the Golden Throne for the entirety of the civil war.
• Hidden Depths: Beneath his "barbarian lord" persona lied a genius strategist and a man who cared deeply for his family and people. He occasionally dropped the act to show he was very insightful about his brothers' various emotional problems and awareness of the secrets they tried to hide.
• Hypocrite:
  • While he hated psychic powers, he allowed Rune Priests to exist, which he justified with the reason that the magic they channeled is completely different. He was wrong, there is a wolf of Fenris spirit, but their psyker abilities come from the warp like any other psyker.
  • As much as he despised psykers he was loved and was immensely loyal to his father, the Emperor, who was the most powerful human psyker to have ever lived.
• Kill Steal: The heart of the feud between Russ and Lion El'Jonson. The leader of the planet Dulan had insulted Russ, who fought his way to the enemy's throne room just in time to see El'Jonson behead him. Russ socked El'Jonson in the jaw, leading to a protracted battle that abruptly ended when Russ started laughing at his own immaturity. El'Jonson responded by knocking Russ cold and leaving with his Dark Angels in a huff.
• Leeroy Jenkins: In both battle and personal interactions (usually moreso the latter), Russ had a habit of just rushing forward and doing things his way rather than taking time to think things through. His feuds with Magnus, Angron, and Lion El'Jonson (in fact, the latter two were incredibly similar to himself in many ways) probably could have been handled much better if he tried to go about his interactions with them with a bit more consideration and less hot-headed anger.
• Mage Killer: Due to his great resistance towards psychic powers as well as his great hatred towards psykers, he's pretty darn effective at taking out spellslingers.
• Military Maverick: According to legend, Leman Russ refused to take any shit from anyone, up to and including the Emperor. He certainly wasn't going to take any from Roboute Guilliman, friend or not, and he nearly started a civil war to maintain the independence of the Space Wolves Legion.
• My Master, Right or Wrong: He doesn't care if he is ordered to kill an entire chapter of Space Marines, even if they are led by his own brothers. If the Emperor says it, he will do it without question. This bit the Imperium in the ass since he didn't see anything wrong with Horus telling him that the Emperor wanted Magnus and the Thousand Sons dead, unaware that the Emperor merely wanted Magnus detained and brought back to Terra alive to answer for damaging the Webway Project and that Horus had gone traitor by this point. The fact it was Magnus probably didn't help matters either, and the end result was the loss of an entire Legion to Chaos.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: His willingness to obey the order by the then-corrupted Horus assuming it was on the Emperor's behalf to kill Magnus and the Thousand Sons without question. Not only did this result in Magnus and his entire Legion betraying the Imperium but it diverted the Space Wolves away from theaters of war where they could have minimized damage the other Chaos Primarchs were already causing.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Or, more precisely, Viking Werewolf Space Marine Demigod.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Some stories have shown that he deliberately plays up some of the "loudmouth barbarian" aspects of his personality to make others underestimate just how canny a strategist and fighter he really is.
• Odd Friendship: Against all odds, with Lorgar. In Betrayer, Russ actually compliments one of Lorgar's written works, and in The First Heretic, Magnus tells Lorgar that Russ argued for preserving Lorgar's place in the Great Crusade and sparing him excommunication when the Emperor was pondering just that. Lorgar even once managed to stop the two of them from duking it out simply by telling them to stop.
• Raised by Wolves: The infant Russ was first discovered by a mother Thunderwolf who, sensing his feral spirit, adopted the young Primarch and raised him as one of her own cubs.
• Undying Loyalty: To quote the Emperor himself, "'Russ is true-hearted, one of the few I know will never fall.'". Rather than attempting to ever turn him, the best Traitors could do was misdirect Russ as far away from the war as possible.
• Wild Child: He was one of these when the people of Fenris found him.
• World's Best Warrior: Russ wasn't the strongest, smartest, or most powerful of his brothers, but he was possibly the most skilled warrior of them. He believed that there was only one of his brothers that he couldn't kill in a one-on-one battle and proved it more than once.

Rogal Dorn, Primarch of the Imperial Fists

There is no enemy. The foe on the battlefield is merely the manifestation of that which we must overcome. He is doubt, and fear, and despair, Every battle is fought within. Conquer the battlefield that lies inside you, and the enemy disappears like the illusion that he is.

Rogal Dorn was adopted into one of the clans inhabiting the icy world of Inwit, and eventually came to rule the entire planet and the surrounding region of space. 40 years after the death of his adopted grandfather, he was found by the Emperor, greeting him aboard his starship, the Phalanx. The Emperor welcomed Dorn and entrusted the Phalanx to Dorn's care as the fortress-monastery of the Imperial Fists.

As a Primarch, Dorn was known for his unswerving loyalty to the Emperor, his absolute refusal of falsehood, and his military genius, especially in fortification and defense. He was very highly regarded by Roboute Guilliman, and Horus himself reckoned that if the Luna Wolves and Imperial Fists were ever to fight each other, their respective mastery of offense and defense would turn the battle into an endless stalemate. However, despite their shared specialty in siege warfare, or perhaps because of it, there was a deep divide between Dorn and Perturabo, who resented the Emperor's apparent favoritism towards the Imperial Fists' Primarch.

During the darkest hours of the Horus Heresy, Dorn and the Imperial Fists were instrumental in the defense of the Imperial Palace. He was separated from his brother and father during the counter-attack against Horus' flagship, and was the one to carry the Emperor's dying body to Terra for interment within the Golden Throne. Afterward Dorn crusaded against the traitors with vigor, and initially resisted Roboute Guilliman's attempt to break down the Space Marine Legions as an insult to his loyalty, before relenting in order to avoid a second civil war. He met his end repelling a Black Crusade against Cadia, and was last seen mounting a counter-attack against an enemy vessel. All that was found of Rogal Dorn was his skeletal hand, which remains the Imperial Fists' holiest relic.

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• Anti-Magic: Dorn's innate psychic power and sheer strength of will allow him to suppress the powers of all but the strongest psychics in his presence.
• The Atoner: Dorn was plagued by guilt over his perceived failure of the Emperor at the close of the Heresy and the near-civil war that followed soon after, and sought penance through a crusade and the battle against the Iron Warriors that became the Iron Cage incident. He was willing to get every one of his men killed in order to capture Perturabo.
• Badass Boast: To his brother Lion El'Jonson, who cited the tried-and-true military maxim, "no battle plan survives contact with the enemy.":
  Then you're not making the right plans.
• Beneath the Mask: Dorn feared his own divinity.
• Boring, but Practical: Dorn and the Imperial Fists exemplify this trope. Dorn's personal weapon, Storm's Teeth, is just a larger version of the classic chainsword while his legion excels at building defenses then picking off foes from behind said defenses.
• Bruiser with a Soft Center: Rogal Dorn kept a fur robe from his adoptive grandfather and treasured his memory of him so much that he slept with it every night. This means the Primarch who was so resolute that it could be considered his biggest flaw also kinda slept with a security blanket. His Undying Loyalty and sense of duty were also arguable manifestations that he went about his work fastidiously for the benefit of his fellows.
• Brutal Honesty: Rogal Dorn did not mince words even when he really probably should have - an example was when he replied to Fulgrim asking if Dorn thought that he would be able to make a fortress that Perturabo wouldn't be able to breach. While Dorn was not boastful in simply replying that he could, it nonetheless enraged Perturabo, who resented the lack of respect paid to his legion and was jealous that Dorn was allowed to build Terra's defenses.
• Cool Sword: Wielded a massive chainsword named Storm's Teeth.
• Combat Pragmatist: How he fights Fulgrim during the Siege of Terra, bashing Fulgrim's face in repeatedly when he tries to talk.
• Crazy-Prepared: The Last Wall. After the Codex Astartes forced the Space Marine Legions to get broken down into Chapters, Dorn secretly decreed to the Imperial Fists and their Successor Chapters that they would reunite as a full legion to defend Terra in case a threat similar to the Siege of Terra ever happened again.
• Determinator: Said to have inherited the Emperor's iron will.
• Does Not Like Magic: While not as vehemently opposed as Mortarion or Russ, Dorn was one of the voices that opposed the used of Warp sorcery. While he saw the value of it, he considered sorcery too dangerous and unpredictable to be worth the risk of keeping.
• The Dutiful Son: Dorn had no interest in renown or recognition, and fortified Terra uncomplainingly when he was ordered to while his brothers went on with the glory of expanding the Imperium. He was outright dutiful to the point of Undying Loyalty, and the Traitor Primarchs never believed for a second that they could ever hope to sway Dorn over to them.
• The Engineer: While not as obvious as their rivals, the Iron Warriors, Dorn and the Imperial Fists were known for building fortresses and fortifications on planets they conquered. They were so good at this, the Emperor got Dorn and his Legion to fortify the Imperial Palace on Terra.
• Fatal Flaw: Dorn's Determinator tendencies often unfortunately translated into Attack! Attack! Attack! on the battlefield. The most famous instance of this was the Iron Cage Incident, where his legion were led into a trap and consequently massacred and humiliated by the Iron Warriors.
  • Off the battlefield it's Open Mouth, Insert Foot. Everytime he goes to talk to people about sensitive things he sends them running. Whether it's demanding Forge World Xana's obedience, rather than just negotiating with them (sending them to side with Horus), confronting Ferrus about his anger issues and punching him in the face, convincing Curze that everybody is out to get him or basically disowning Sigismund before the Siege. His mouth does more damage to his allies than his fists to his enemies.
• Foil: He and Perturabo were the greatest architects and masters of siege warfare among the Primarchs. Both were known for their unbending, no-nonsense demeanors and incredible defensive prowess. Both were known for obsessing over their personal endurance: Dorn with his Pain Glove meditation and Perturabo with his insistence on taking the most grueling sieges. The main difference between the two is that Dorn was less self-absorbed and somewhat more openly caring than the dour and non-communicative Perturabo. Fittingly, both use a yellow and gray color scheme for their armor, but invert which of the colors are dominant and secondary.
• Four-Star Badass: Dorn was one of the greatest military minds of the Crusade; while his particular speciality was in defense and fortification, he had a broad overall skillset and was considered exemplary by both Guilliman and Horus.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: While Dorn was respected by many primarchs, he was also insanely good at making enemies of them. Perturabo, Ferrus, Lion, Curze and Alpharius all disliked him, Fulgrim thought he was hard to get along with and Horus himself had to tell Dorn to ease up multiple times.
• Frontline General: While he preferred to lead from a strategic command center as to keep oversight over a battle, Dorn has no trouble entering a fight and throwing down, for example at the Battle of Pluto where he slew his traitor brother Alpharius.
• Harmony Versus Discipline: Firmly on the discipline side, which is precisely why Malcador doesn't tell him about the warp as Dorn would have tried to master it, which would lead to disaster.
• Heroic BSoD: Dorn really didn't take the deaths of Sanguinius and Horus (more the former than the latter, but Horus was close to him once upon a time) and the entombment of the Emperor on the Golden Throne well at all. He blamed himself for all of it, especially not being by the Emperor's and Sanguinius's sides in their darkest hour, and threw himself and his Legion into hunting down the Traitor Legions with a zeal unmatched by any other loyalist. By the time of the "Iron Cage" incident, Dorn was verging on Death Seeker and threw himself and his sons into the fray with no help, no reinforcements, and no battle plan more complicated than "break the daemonic fortress down and drag Perturabo back to Terra".
• Heroic Willpower: Dorn's will was so ironclad that nothing could sway him from his convictions. Even the forces of Chaos eventally gave up on trying to corrupt him.
• Hidden Depths: Outwardly typecast as a stolid, unimaginative technician, Dorn actually had a reputation as the greatest military genius of all the Primarchs, a man who truly brought it all to the table: Lion El'Jonson's courage and audacity, Guilliman's cold logic and organization, mixed with a healthy streak of Leman Russ and Jaghatai Khan's flair for doing the unexpected.
• Jerkass: He could be a dour, blunt and humorless person, and often viewed wars and battles as cold numbers games. He often came into conflict with the most humane Primarchs over this attitude towards war including Sanguinius, Vulkan and Corax. His real problem was that his refusal to tell a lie of any kind could make him come across as tactless and insensitive, causing him to unintentionally offend his brothers on more than one occasion.
• Laser-Guided Karma: He once remarked that he could breach any fortification given the right resources, including one built and designed by Perturabo; he made those remarks within earshot of the latter. After falling to Chaos, Perturabo paid him back for that during the Iron Cage incident wherein Dorn did indeed get to penetrate a fortress Perturabo designed and built... and lost a countless number of his sons as a result.
• Last of His Kind: In the era after the Heresy Dorn was the last of the loyalist Primarchs to go missing, making him the sole Primarch in the Imperium for a time prior to Vulkan's temporary return during the War of the Beast and then the resurrection of Guilliman in the modern era. He was around long enough for some of the Primaris Space Marines to have met him.
• Macho Masochism: Dorn saw pain as a purifying, focusing force. He invented the Pain Glove, a device designed to enact controllable levels of pain on a subject, so that he and his legion could meditate in agony without causing direct damage to their bodies that would limit combat potential.
• My Greatest Failure: Dorn blamed himself for failing to defend the Emperor despite his role as Praetorian of Terra. He spent the rest of his known life punishing himself in atonement for it.
• Never Found the Body: Although early background material claims that Dorn's entire body was recovered after his death, later versions of the story state that only one of his hands was ever found.
• Praetorian Guard: Dorn and his Fists spent so much time as the Emperor's vanguard that they earned a reputation as the Emperor's Praetorians, just as much as the Emperor's actual Praetorian Guard, the Custodes.
• Pragmatic Hero: Dorn always focuses on getting the job done and he'll do almost anything to make that happen. He basically tore down and rebuilt the Imperial Palace he built with his legion in preparation for the Siege of Terra. He also developed the Last Wall protocol to reunite his legion and their successors to protect a potentially besieged Terra which is something Guiliman's Codex Astartes would probably not support.
• Putting the Band Back Together: Dorn never fully accepted Guilliman's Codex Astartes reforms, and secretly made contingency plans for all Successor Chapters of the Seventh Legion to unite under a quasi-legionary structure in times of grave crisis. Known as the Last Wall protocol, this had been invoked once thus far, in M32 during the massive Ork WAAAGH! led by The Beast, which saw Terra under siege for the first time since the Heresy.
• Revenge Before Reason: The "Iron Cage" incident. After the Horus Heresy, Perturabo, the Primarch of the Iron Warriors, revealed his location to Terra and challenged Dorn to take his "Eternal Fortress". In response, Dorn gathered his Legion and rushed to meet Perturabo's challenge, declaring that he'd find Perturabo and bring him back "in an iron cage". In his anger, Dorn skipped his usual planning phase in his rush to bring the traitor to justice with no care that it was an obvious trap. When his Fists entered the Eternal Fortress and fought their way to the central keep, they found themselves in a well-prepared kill-zone, surrounded with twenty square miles of bunkers and razorwire. The Iron Warriors were able to pick the Imperial Fists apart while Dorn's men had to use their battle-brothers' corpses as cover. It was only thanks to the arrival of Guilliman and his Ultramarines that they weren't all killed. May instead have been a case of Death Seeker as the Dorn and the Imperial Fists were opposed to the Codex Astartes and may have been using the Iron Cage as an excuse for one final battle to go out fighting as a full legion instead of the smaller Chapters outlined in the Codex.
• Self-Harm: Dorn invented the Pain Glove as a tool for his meditation after the Emperor's fall, and the entire Legion felt its touch in order to be symbolically reborn. Since then, use of the Pain Glove has become a fundamental part of the Imperial Fists' philosophy.
• The Spock: Dorn was pragmatic, focusing on his life as a warrior and commander and refusing to govern conquered planets when other members of the growing Imperium already did that. This was emphasized when he was logical and even ruthless Spock to Sanguinius' Mccoy and Jaghatai Khan's Kirk, during the Siege of Terra. Dorn saw the defense of Terra as a cold and brutal numbers game.
• The Stoic: Dorn was a hard military man with no time for nonsense and little use for emotional displays.
• The Strategist: An excellent military commander, Dorn coordinated the successful defense of the Sol System during the Horus Heresy. Pre-Heresy, Horus himself even said that if his legion fought Dorn's, the battle would be endless since Dorn and the Imperial Fists were the best defensive tacticians and siege specialists in the Imperium.
• Undying Loyalty: Dorn is the only Loyalist Primarch that Horus and the other Traitor Primarchs didn't even pretend or suggest had a chance of joining their side. The Traitors could imagine there were scenarios, no matter how unlikely, in which the others might turn on the Emperor, they knew that Dorn was loyal to the Emperor to an absolute fault, such that even his own flaws wouldn't sway him from his side.
• Will Not Tell a Lie: Dorn would not lie under any circumstances, even if it helped his cause. The most famous case was when Horus asked whether the Imperial Palace could withstand an assault by the Iron Warriors, and Dorn concluded that yes, if properly defended his fortifications were impenetrable. This drove Perturabo into a snarling rage and set their long rivalry in motion.
• You Are in Command Now: Was made acting Lord-Commander of the Imperium while his father secluded himself in the Imperial Webway fixing the damage Magnus had done, with Dorn ruling the Loyalist worlds still accessible through the Ruinstorm.

Sanguinius, Primarch of the Blood Angels

It is not the descent toward the shadow nor the rise toward the light that makes us superior. It is the endless struggle between the two that greatness of character lies. We are tested, and we do not break.

The infant Sanguinius was found on the planet Baal, a radioactive wasteland where a handful of primitive pure-blooded humans battled against hordes of degenerate mutants. The winged youth was adopted by a tribe called the Blood and grew to become their hero, an angelic warrior who represented human perfection. After the planet was cleansed of mutants the Emperor arrived at Baal, and Sanguinius immediately bent his knee and pledged his loyalty to his true father.

The worthiest of Baal's warriors followed Sanguinius to join the IX Legion, the Blood Angels. The legion quickly became known for excelling in close combat, but it also bore a terrible secret, a flaw in its gene-seed that drove some of its warriors into berserk rages. When the Horus Heresy erupted the traitors hoped to exploit this weakness and tempt Sanguinius and his warriors into damnation, but the Primarch resisted and rushed to his father's side.

The Blood Angels were one of the three legions to defend the Imperial Palace during the Siege of Terra, where Sanguinius held the Eternity Gate alone against a tide of horrors and broke a Greater Daemon of Khorne over his knee. In the battle's final hour, Sanguinius joined the Emperor's assault upon Horus' flagship, and was the first to confront the Arch-Heretic. Even then he tried to redeem Horus, only to be forced into battle and killed by his brother. The savagery of Sanguinius' martyrdom cursed the Blood Angels with the Black Rage, the blood-memory of their Primarch's death.

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• The Ace: Exaggerated Trope. The Primarchs are all impossibly strong, charismatic (well, outside of Angron) and had superhuman learning capabilities, but even so Sanguinius was The Ace above all of them — as a result, absolutely everyone liked and respected him, Horus felt it was Sanguinius who truly should have been Warmaster when he was at risk of dying, and when Guilliman feared the Emperor dead he chose Sanguinius to lead his Imperium Secundus.
• A Father to His Men: He knew by name everyone serving in the Blood Angels legion, be they Astartes, Guardsmen or slaves.
• All-Loving Hero: He saw the good in the savage and bloodthirsty mutants and heretics of the maltreated Revenant Legion and refused to give up on them. Under his guidance, they were raised from a group of monsters into honorable and cultured defenders of humanity.
• Angelic Beauty: He's the only Primarch to sport white wings, and is said to be rather attractive.
• The Anti-Nihilist: What made him different from other precogs like Curze and Horus, while Sanguinius had visions of his death, and knew on some level that every victory just brought him closer to that inevitability, he tried to be the best he could be and fought to make sure his demise was for the noblest of causes.
• Archangel Michael: Sanguinius was one of the highest and most badass Primarchs of the Imperium, and deliberately set up as the Good Counterpart to Horus and Angron.
• Band of Brothers: A member of the "Dauntless Few", a group of Primarchs Roboute Gulliman considered to be the most dependable: Russ, Manus, Sanguinius, Dorn, and himself. Guilliman often posited that any war fought by the Ultramarines and one of the Dauntless Few's legions together could be won outright, no matter the forces opposed to them, and often favored pairing one or more of these brother's legions with his Ultramarines.
• Beauty Equals Goodness: He is both the most handsome primarch and the most unambiguously good.
• Blood Lust: After killing a rogue and vampiric Legionnaire, Sanguinius admitted to Horus he had a dark thirst for the blood of the living that sometimes revealed itself during the heat of combat, which he kept secret out of fear that his entire Blood Angel legion would be exterminated.
• Cain and Abel: With Horus. Each thought the other was the best pick for Warmaster, Sanguinius shared the secret of the Flaw with Horus, and Horus was willing to confide his doubts and misgivings about the future in return. Even at the end and during their final battle, Sanguinius still tried to reach some remnant of his brother, and Horus in the grip of Chaos still offered Sanguinius a chance to stand by his side...but tragically, it all ended with Horus impaling and killing Sanguinius.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Horus smashed Sanguinius with Worldbreaker which reopened the old wound inflicted by Angron. Then, he dragged him off the floor and hammered him until his wings were broken, his bones shattered, his internals flooded with blood and his face hung loose from his face like a slackened mask. In the meantime, Sanguinius couldn't even utter his last words as blood filled his mouth. Horus then snapped Sanguinius' neck and spine simultaneously. Afterwards, his soul was ripped apart and devoured by the Old Four. No wonder his gene-sons are so traumatized by his death.
• Do Not Go Gentle: It's heavily implied he approached his fight with Horus with this mindset–he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Horus would kill him and that there was no way out of his fated death–the absolute best he could hope for was turning the Chaos to save himself, which he would never do–but Sanguinius still fought with all his might, possibly aiming for a Take You With Me or to at least damage Horus enough for The Emperor to finish him off. Even when Horus had thoroughly beaten him to a literal bloody pulp, Sanguinius interrupted his brother's attempt at a dramatic coup de grâce with Warbreaker by clawing at Horus' face with his remaining good hand; showing that he was committed to at least slowing Horus down to the very end.
• Do Well, But Not Perfect: Sanguinius' entire MO. As stated in the quote above, he believed that true strength of character lies in being balanced and he never set out to be the greatest, be it as a commander, conqueror or Primarch, being content with whatever good he could do. Ironically, it's this exact goodness that eventually exalted him to holy reverence.
• Enemy Within: Like his Legion, he has an innate rage and bloodthirst that he has to keep in check at all times. The rare occasions that he lets his control slip are terrifying to behold.
• Flying Brick: He's the only Primarch who can fly.
• Foil: Is compared to 5 Primarchs.
  • To Horus. Horus and Sanguinius are the two most well-liked and charismatic Primarchs. Both are renowned for their heroism, even among their brothers. Both get visions of a dark future. Both have certain insecurities (Horus about his fitness to be warmaster, Sanguinius about the mutation that caused his wings). The difference is that Sanguinius is aware of his insecurities and decides to face his fears and doubts head-on, regardless. Horus on the other hand allows a vision and his flaws to drag him into hell and become a puppet of the Chaos Gods.
  • To Angron. He is Angron in reverse. Angron was an empathethic soul who was turned into a bloodthirsty monster due to the Butcher's nails. He took a noble legion and turned them into monsters. He is probably the most unpopular primarch. Sanguinius is a naturally bloodthirsty monster who strives to be noble. He took a legion of derelicts and turned them into some of the most noble heroes of the Imperium. As a result, he was among the most popular primarchs in life and the most beloved in death.
  • He is also compared to Fulgrim by the Khan. Sanguinius has insecurities, whereas Fulgrim IS insecure. Sanguinius wears his finery like it's no big deal if he is with or without, whereas Fulgrim seems to need all the pomp and grandeur to keep his ego together. Both stimulated their legions to pursue the arts, but for different reasons. For Fulgrim it was to pursue perfection, for Sanguinius it was to keep the inner monsters of his legion in check.
  • Like Curze he has horrific visions of dark fates, but whereas the Night Haunter became a fatalist who saw no point in trying to be better, Sanguinius endeavours to be the best version of himself regardless of the outcome.
  • He is also compared favorably with Vulkan, the other nicest Primarch. While Vulkan was specifically designed by the Emperor to be a good person, Sanguinius was implicitly designed to be a savage warmonger. Vulkan followed his design with grace, Sanguinius went far and above the call of creation, and both are well-known for their sincere affability.
• Good Is Not Nice: Sanguinius is undeniably the noblest among the Primarchs, but he is still a gene-forged demigod made for war and conquest, and as Ruinstorm showed with how he dealt with his brother Konrad Curze, even his kindness and compassion has limits.
• Good Counterpart: He was perhaps best contrasted with his brother Angron. The two were both meant to act as "angels" to the Emperor: Angron, with his inbuilt empathy and psychic ability to soothe pain, would be the gentle protector angel. Sanguinius, on the other hand, was given a thirst for blood and hunger for violence, would be the ruthless warrior angel. The circumstances of the worlds they were sent to saw them developing into the exact opposite of their original purposes. Both ended up targeted by Khorne and Horus, but where Angron willingly joined both, Sanguinius battled against them to his dying day.
  • More directly, he's this to the Angel, the Emperor's original insane attempt to create a transhuman general. He's effectively everything the Angel should have been, down to their identical mutations granting them wings, but retains a kind, noble nature instead of his predecessor's maddened zealotry.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: He's blond and one of the most heroic and noble Primarchs, in contrast to his brothers who are (to varying degrees) pretty much Broken Aces.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Though he died in battle against Horus, he managed to damage his armor enough for the Emperor to exploit this weakness during the final battle.
• Heroic Willpower: He had the same lust for blood and craving for violence that his Legion did, but was willful enough to never give into it.
  • By the time Anabasis was enacted, he was mortally wounded from all the prior fighting. That did very little to slow him down even as he continued to sustain more injuries from fighting his way to Horus aboard the Vengeful Spirit, although he paused a moment to lightly chide a Blood Angel for worrying about him instead of focusing at the task at hand: "On I said, Ikaseti".
• Horrifying the Horror: As Ka'bandha and Angron will testify.
• Incorruptible Pure Pureness: He's called The Pure One for a reason.
• Irony: Played heartwarmingly. The most mutant and warp-tainted Primarch with the most severe gene-flaw from a world of irradiated heretics given command of a motley legion of savage vampires becomes the strongest, most beloved and unfailingly loyal champion of the Imperium turning his legion into noble and artistically-inclined Marines dedicated to protecting innocents.
  • The positions he and Angron ended in the exact opposite positions they were intended to have: Angron, who was given the power to suppress pain in others, became a bloodthirsty daemon of Khonre with no resistance while Sanguinius, who was meant to be a savage killer, became a near-literal angel who rebuked any attempt of Khorne to convert him to his service.
• Jack of All Stats: Leman Russ once called Sanguinius a "baresark (berserker) in an angel's garb" and stated that he had the perfect blend of martial grace and bestial savagery.
  • He is considered to embody the best aspects of his father and his brothers, though not to their own degree, such as The Emperor's (hidden) humanity, Jaghatai's speed, Dorn's fortitude, Vulkan's empathy , Mortarion and Russ' resilience, Fulgrim's efficacy, Horus' charisma, and so on.
• Long-Haired Pretty Boy: Sanguinius had long blond hair and was the most handsome of the Primarchs, with Fulgrim being the only one of his brothers who could compare.
• Loved by All: Sanguinius was probably the single-most adored Primarch, even above Horus. He was considered a trusted ally by virtually all of his brothers and was well known for his ability to smooth out disputes between them. Horus suggested Sanguinius should have been Warmaster instead of him, Guilliman indicated he should be named Emperor of the Imperium should anything happen to the actual Emperor, and even the bitter Perturabo couldn't find a reason to be resentful to him. He was so beloved that even though he was the most obviously mutated of the Primarchs in an Imperium that despises mutants, he was seen as near-flawless. Even after Horus fell to Chaos and was corrupted, he once said he wished he had Sanguinius by his side, and still fondly calls him by his epithet of Brightest One.
  • Despite his beloved and semi-divine stature, he was very grounded and cordial, always the first to offer help even in the most mundane of tasks, and give the lion's share of glory to others.
• Manly Tears: In The End And The Death Vol I, it is said that Sanguinius wept as he did the monumentous task of closing the Eternity Gate of the Imperial Palace at the precipice of the Siege, knowing full well that it meant that whatever happened next, it is an acknowledgment of defeat, and a condemnation to all those who couldn't make it to the other side in time to death.
• The McCoy: Was this during the Siege of Terra, in comparison to Dorn's Spock and Jaghatai Khan's Kirk. Sanguinius was the most reluctant to sacrifice his soldiers' lives and was just as focused on preserving them as he was on slowing down Horus. In The Lost and the Damned when the Traitor Legions finally make planetfall, Sanguinius orders the Imperial Fists manning the Helios Gate to open the Gate and allow human conscripts manning the outworks to flee into the Imperial Palace, despite the fact that the World Eaters, lead by Angron himself, are hot on their heels.
• Meaningful Name: "Sanguineus" is Latin for "of blood".
• Messianic Archetype: Played surprisingly straight. If the Emperor is the closest thing Humanity has to a God, then Sanguinius of all the Primarchs was his Jesus.
• Mind Rape: Unintentionally so, but his death rippled a psychic backlash through his entire legion, manifesting as the infamous Red Thirst and Black Rage, even across successor chapters more than 10 thousand years later.
• Nice Guy: Played ridiculously straight as far as xenocidal demigod generals go. He is one of the kindest, most noble, most heroic soul in the Imperium. Which is precisely why he was fated to die.
• Not Quite Dead: In Darkness in the Blood, it is revealed that Sanguinius appeared before Dante and Mephiston as the Devastation of Baal drew to a close. Noticeably more melancholy and sullen than he had been in life, he claimed that he wasn't the man they had known, but nonetheless imparted the knowledge he had gathered in the time since his death and entrusted them with the future of the Blood Angels. Comparing notes in the aftermath, they conclude that a part of Sanguinius still survives in the Warp.
• Not So Stoic: In all the battles he fought, the enemies he faced, the aliens he purged, he never once knew fear. But The Emperor driven to silence over the Battle of Terra? That terrifies Sanguinius.
• One-Man Army: During the Siege of Terra, he singlehandedly went up against a Chaos Warlord Titan; Daughter Of Torment, a Chaos Reaver Titan; Ka'bandha, arguably the strongest Greater Daemon in the battlefield; Angron, Primarch of the World Eaters and the Chaos forces' greatest warrior; an endless swarm of traitor and daemonic forces and won.
• Only Sane Man: While one of the most loyal Primarchs, Sanguinius is also one of the most sensible, along with Jaghatai Khan and Roboute Guilliman. He was approached by daemons of Khorne and listened to their attempts to sway him. After having actually considered Chaos' temptations, he arrived at the logical conclusion that accepting the temptations would be asinine and rejected them vehemently.
  • Jaghatai Khan, a fellow level-headed Primarch and one of the most ostracized of his brothers, looks to Sanguinius for counsel and approval. When Dorn forbade Khan from leaving the Palace's grounds during the Siege, Khan turns to Sanguinius and asks if he will save lives by venturing out. When Sanguinius says that he will save many, Khan says, "that is what I was made for. I will ride out". To which Dorn permits.
• Our Angels Are Different: Well, for starters, he's probably the most badass one out there.
• Reality Warper: He has the ability to bend reality using the warp in subtle ways, best demonstrated with his ability to fly: his wings aren't capable of mechanical flight, instead he uses the power of the Warp to make him fly with them. He also once successfully guided his damaged battleship, Red Tear, from a re-entry that should have destroyed it to a safe landing purely through force of will.
• Red Baron: The Great Angel, The Pure One, The Brightest One, Warmaster.
• Seers: Sanguinius had a limited ability to catch glimpses of the future, which may be why he immediately knelt before the Emperor. As indicated in the Horus Heresy novel Angels of Caliban, he knew how his confrontation with Horus would end, which only makes his sacrifice all the nobler.
• Silk Hiding Steel: Insofar as a galaxy-conquering demigod can be. His aloof coolness hides a warrior that is frighteningly brutal and hyper-effective in battle.
• The Dreaded: Sanguinius is too often considered by others as a respectable, inspiring yet soft Primarch, with too few, especially his foes, knowing little of his martial prowess. However, Russ and Horus, on seperate occasions, admitted that their fear at the potential prospect of having him as an adversary.
• The Paragon Always Rebels: TWICE. First was when he first met the emperor and dared to ask what would happen if he didn't comply to his father. Second was when he rejected the Emperor's anointing of him as Warmaster and becoming a rally figurehead for the Loyalist forces at the precipice of the Siege. Both times he stated his opposition he did coherently and reasonably enough that the Emperor actually gave his sincere assurance.
• Too Good for This Sinful Earth: Particularly tragic since he fell trying to convince Horus to redeem along with being one of the nicest characters in a crapsack world like Warhammer 40,000. To make matters worse, his death caused a psychic backlash that caused the much maligned Black Rage and Red Thirst among The Blood Angels and their successors.
• Undying Loyalty: His best friend and brother, Horus, had no misconceptions about Sanguinius' loyalty and skill, so instead of even confronting him, the Warmaster sent the Angel to the Daemon World of Signus Prime to die.
• Winged Humanoid: He had a pair of huge white wings and could use them to fly. Whether this was a mutation or some strange expression of the Emperor's genes is unknown.
• Worf Had the Flu: At peak strength, his technical prowess in battle would have been an easy match to Horus. But the exhaustion from the Siege of Terra, combined with Horus being essentially a conduit of the Ruinous Powers, and the fact that he foresaw his death at Horus' hands and accepted it, meant that Sanguinius never stood a chance.
• World's Strongest Man: By far the strongest of Primarchs and one of strongest characters overall. His only defeat before his death was against the greater daemon Ka'bandha, who used a psychic sucker punch to win, and in their rematch Sanguinius thoroughly beat him. Leman Russ, the Emperor's Executioner who was dispatched to rein in a Primarch that went out of line, said that while there are a couple of Primarchs that could give him trouble, Sanguinius is explicitly the only one of his brothers that he wouldn't be able to bring to heel.
  • He consistently defeats Titans, which are often called "god machines" and are generally considered beateable only by another Titan. He defeated an Imperator Titan in Titandeath, a Warlord Titan in Saturnine, a Reaver Titan in Echoes Of Eternity and a Warhound Titan in The End And The Death Vol II.
  • In Echoes of Eternity, Sanguinius defeats Ka'bandha, the greatest of Khorne's Bloodthirsters and the Daemon Primarch Angron, the strongest combatant of the Chaos forces, in rapid succession.
  • In his fateful fight against Horus, Horus confirmed that Sanguinius is indeed the strongest amongst his brothers, and when Horus in his 'mortal form' fought Sanguinius, Sanguinius though mortally wounded, psychically exhausted and plagued by Chaos' blights by then, managed to bring Horus to his knees with a critical strike. Horus needed to channel the entire might of Chaos to prevail, though with that much power, the fight swiftly turned in the Warmaster's favor.
• You Can't Fight Fate: It is made clear at the end of Angels of Caliban that Sanguinius is informed and now fully aware that he will die if he faces Horus in battle, to which he states "To die at Horus's hand is a fate I gladly accept if it means that the Emperor yet lives and fights for mankind. I would speed to this confrontation on the swiftest wings if it means the enduring reign of the Emperor".

Ferrus Manus, Primarch of the Iron Hands

Rest? We were not made to rest; we go on, unflinching, unstoppable, unwavering in our strength. The Emperor did not make us for such mortal concerns as hearth and home; we are his engines of war, his hammers, beating out the fabric of existence into a vessel fit for Mankind to inhabit.

Ferrus Manus was scattered to the planet Medusa, a dark post-apocalyptic wasteland inhabited by primitive nomadic tribes. No records exist of Ferrus' life before he left the wastelands surrounding the Karaashi, the icy mountain where his capsule landed, but there are many legends telling of a wanderer who visited each clan in turn, exhibiting his incredible endurance as well as sharing new technologies he invented or found on his journeys. Many of these stories are apocryphal but many have a core of truth to them, such as the famous story of how Ferrus drowned Asirnoth, the Great Silver Wyrm, in a lava flow until the beast was gone and its skin of living metal was bound to his hands. Becoming known as the Gorgon, Ferrus soon rose to become the god-king of the Medusan clans, yet he always endeavoured to stay neutral in the wars between the tribes, viewing such conflict as a healthy way to strengthen the survivors.

When the Emperor arrived on Medusa, he and his lost son left to compete in many feats of strength, until they returned bound by mutual respect. Ferrus Manus was given command of the X Legion, which became his Iron Hands. Already renowned for their discipline, the Primarch bound his Legion's aggression with logic and soon his warriors had garnered a reputation as highly-effective but ruthless warriors with no tolerance of weakness or failure. Sharing a passion for technology, the Primarch and his gene-sons soon forged close ties with the Adeptus Mechanicus.

Ferrus was disgusted by Horus' betrayal, and came to blows with his close friend Fulgrim when he tried to tempt Ferrus to join the traitors' cause. In his haste to bring the renegades to justice, Ferrus, who had been granted command of the first wave of the Imperium's response, took his veterans and fastest ships and hurried ahead of the rest of the Iron Hands, which spared them when he was betrayed again during the Drop Site Massacre. Ferrus Manus was slain by Fulgrim during the Massacre, though some Iron Hands maintain that he somehow escaped death and will return to them someday.

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• Bare-Fisted Monk: Before switching to a mighty Thunder Hammer, Ferrus Manus was highly proficient fighting unarmed, using his metal-coated hands as highly lethal weapons.
• Blinded by Rage: Ferrus was so enraged by the betrayal of his brothers, especially his closest friend, Fulgrim, that he threw caution to the wind and set out with his best men and fastest ships to meet the traitors head on, leaving the remainder of his own Legion behind. During the battle on Isstvan V itself, Manus' rage led him to forge far in advance of his Salamander and Raven Guard allies, resulting in his troops being out-manoeuvred and out-gunned by the Traitors and with the ultimate result that the Gorgon fell to at the hands of Fulgrim.
• Cain and Abel: Ferrus was closer to Fulgrim, the Primarch of the Emperor's Children, than he was to any of his other brothers due to their shared pursuit of perfection. After his corruption by Horus and the Laeran daemon, Fulgrim attempted to recruit Ferus to the traitor’s cause, an attempt that failed and led to Ferrus being killed by the one who he considered his only true friend.
• Commonality Connection: His closest friend was Fulgrim, by a mile. At first glance they seemed like polar opposites, but both grew up in harsh conditions, on dying, dreary worlds, working with their hands to survive.
• Cursed with Awesome: While he was well aware of the advantages his living metal hands gave him, Manus always felt that they weren't his true hands and that this meant that anything he accomplished with them wasn't truly his own, something that offended the Gorgon's belief in self-reliance. The reverence his Legion held for him and his hands distressed the Primarch even more, especially when they began to voluntarily replace their own hands with cybernetics in imitation of their gene-father.
  They are not my hands. This fact is forgotten by my brothers — inexplicably, it has always seemed to me. The hands are strong, to be sure, and have created great things for us all, but they are not mine. [...] Already my Legion's warriors replace their shield hands with metal in my honour, and so they too are learning to doubt the natural strength of their bodies. They must be weaned off this practice before it becomes a mania for them. Hatred of what is natural, of what is human, is the first and greatest of the corruptions.
  —Ferrus Manus, Wrath of Iron
• Department of Redundancy Department: "Ferrus Manus" means "Iron Hand" in Latin. His hands are made of xeno-necrodermis iron. His legion is called the Iron Hands. His flagship is called, "Fist Of Iron".
• Et Tu, Brute?: He took Fulgrim's defection very personally. The sheer rage he had at his formerly closest brother rebelling led him to being far too reckless on Istvan V in his attempts to make a beeline to confront Fulgrim personally.
• Everyone Has Standards: For all his hatred of weakness, he found the increasing disdain for humanity and practices of replacing body parts with augmetics his sons were developing to emulate him disturbing. He promised to break them of both habits after the Great Crusade ended, but died in battle before he got the chance.
• Fatal Flaw: His obsession with strength and hatred of weakness gave him severe issues with communication and self-esteem. He would often take unnecessary risks in battle and refuse to discuss any of his various concerns with others for fear of seeming weak.
• Flesh Versus Steel: Although his Legion are most famous for their belief that steel and technology is stronger than flesh, Ferrus himself was a great believer in the power of flesh. This belief came from his self-reliant nature that led him to consider over-reliance on technology a weakness that stopped humanity reaching its true potential. The Gorgon had planned to remove the metal from his iron hands and abolish the practice of cyberization in his Legion, but was killed before he had the chance to do either.
• Foil: Something of a meta-example, but pretty much everything that used to be said about him is now said about the Lion. In Vengeful Spirit, Horus describes him as the Primarch who is most similar to him in his understanding of and feeling for war. He was described by Guilliman as the Primarch you could most rely on to get the job done and never break. He was tempted by Chaos and didn't even consider succumbing to their influence. According to Sorot Tchure of the Word Bearers, his Iron Hands legion was one of the most revered, alongside the Luna Wolves, Imperial Fists and Ultramarines. Furthermore, later on a different Primarch described himself as the Emperor's weapon as well, no prize for guessing who.
• Force and Finesse: The force to Fulgrim's finesse. Ferrus preferred a straightforward, brute force approach to warfare, whereas Fulgrim preferred more creative and elegant approaches.
• Hunter of Monsters: The nomadic Medusan clans have many legends that tell of Manus slaying numerous beasts and monsters in the northern wastes after he arrived on the planet, with the most famous being Asirnoth, the Great Silver Wyrm, whose living metal skin bonded to his hands and forearms after Manus drowned it in magma.
• Hypocrite: For all of his railing against his sons' use of cybernetics and belief that one can only rely on their natural strength, Ferrus' own strength stemmed primarily from the enhancements he received from the Emperor. While he wasn't wholly in the wrong to oppose the Iron Hands' hatred of their own humanity, the Chapter's worship of augmentation isn't that different from the reverence given to the process that creates Space Marines in the first place.
• Irony:
  • The Primarch who espoused a Social Darwinist, "survival of the fittest" philosophy, despising personal weakness and holding rationality above all, ended up becoming the first one to die because he couldn't control his emotions
  • He was ever striving for strength, efficiency and perfection, something that led to his Legion embracing the use of cybernetic augmentation in an effort to emulate the cold logical perfection of the machine. In an example of situational irony, however, the Primarch believed that perfection should be achieved within the realm of human potential and, not only did he disapprove of his Legion’s of voluntary cybernetics but was also planning to put an end to the practice and remove the metal on his hands, something he was unable to implement due to his death at the hands of his brother Fulgrim.
• King in the Mountain: Despite the fact that he is one of the few loyalist Primarchs to have been confirmed as dead, many amongst the Iron Hands believe that their gene-father will return when his sons most need him. Clan Company Kaargul in particular are staunch followers of this belief and have held visual over the Karaashi, the icy mountain where Ferrus Manus first arrived on Medusa, for the past ten millennia to watch for his return.
• Meaningful Name: In keeping with the often overly literal Imperial naming convention, Ferrus Manus' name means "Iron Hand" in Latin, the name he gave to his Legion after he was rediscovered. The name became even more meaningful, and literal, after his background was expanded during 3rd Edition to include his hands becoming permanently covered in living metal.
• Off with His Head!: Ferrus was decapitated by his beloved brother Fulgrim during their fateful duel on Isstvan V at the outbreak of the Horus Heresy.
• Passed-Over Promotion: Ferrus had always felt that he should have been made Warmaster rather than Horus and, although it was deeply buried, felt some resentment that their father hadn't granted him the honour of leading the Great Crusade. Some have even suggested that this resentment contributed to the Gorgon's lack of caution when he was given command of the force intended to bring the traitorous Warmaster to heel.
• The Perfectionist: He demanded perfection and strength from his subordinates and especially himself.
• Revenge Before Reason: Before the battle of Istvan V, Vulkan and Corax both attempted to voice concerns about the suspicious actions of the Traitor forces to Ferrus. He ignored them both and pressed on, convinced that he must be the one to personally kill Fulgrim for personally betraying him. This decision lead to his death and all three loyal legions present nearly being wiped out.
• Sacrificial Lion: He was the first Primarch to die in the Horus Heresy. As one of the toughest and most respected of the Primarchs, his death shattered the illusion of the Primarchs as invincible warriors and cemented that no one was truly safe in this war.
• Social Darwinist: Ferrus was a great believer in self-reliance and the idea of "survival of the fittest", seeing conflict as the perfect way to hone one's abilities to their fullest potential. His desire to always better himself was what formed the base for his close friendship with his brother Fulgrim.
• The Stoic: He was rarely openly emotional, usually hovering around a base level of sternness. If he ever dropped the facade, it meant that whatever he was feeling had to be near overpowering, as shown by his white-hot fury when he learned that Fulgrim defected to Horus' rebellion.
• Vengeful Ghost: When the Emperor battles Drach'nyen in the War Within the Webway, Ferrus Manus appears among the burning ghosts of the victims of Chaos come to avenge themselves.
• We Can Rebuild Him: Possibly. The Inquisition discovered that Guilliman and Dorn recovered Ferrus Manus' skull and turned it over in exchange for the Iron Hands' agreeing to adopt the Codex Astartes. What they did with it after that isn't clear, but it is rumored they hid it away in the depths of their base, where supposedly the Primarch's essence now dwells...
• We Used to Be Friends: He and Fulgrim used to be very close, so much so they forged weapons for each other as a sign of their friendship. Fulgrim's defection to Horus during the rebellion deeply hurt Ferrus, and lead him to being consumed by anger when he had the chance to kill him. For his part, Fulgrim initially regretted it, and even when he killed him, felt guilt.
• Weapon-Based Characterization: During the Great Crusade, Ferrus favoured the mighty thunder hammer Forgebreaker that was forged for him by Fulgrim, the closest of his brothers. Thematically the hammer fits with the Ferrus' engineer/blacksmith role and his blunt personality.
• Wrench Whack: Early artwork of Ferrus Manus often depicted him wielding a massive pipe wrench instead of the mighty thunder hammer that is his weapon in more contemporary lore.

Roboute Guilliman, Primarch of the Ultramarines

They shall be pure of heart and strong of body, untainted by doubt and unsullied by self-aggrandizement. They will be bright stars on the firmament of battle, Angels of Death whose shining wings bring swift annihilation to the enemies of Man. So shall it be for a thousand times for a thousand years, unto the very end of eternity and the extinction of mortal flesh.

— Opening to the Codex Astartes

Historic

After his incubation capsule came to rest on the mountainous world of Macragge, Roboute Guilliman was found and adopted by Konor, one of the two consuls who ruled the world's militaristic government. As was customary on Macragge, at the age of six the young Primarch began his military training and within two years had mastered everything his tutors could teach him and took his place within the world's military. While Guilliman campaigned to pacify the barbarians of Macragge's northlands, his father's rival consul led a coup that saw Konor assassinated. Returning to find his father slain, Guilliman ruthlessly crushed the forces of his father's betrayer, restored order to the planetary capital and was crowned Battle King of Macragge by popular acclaim. Guilliman ushered in an era of prosperity, advancement and expansion, so that when the Great Crusade reached the Eastern Fringes, the Emperor found not only a lost son but a model for human civilization.

Given the command of the XIII Legion of Astartes, Guilliman and his Ultramarines pushed the Imperium's borders ever outward, his tactical and logistical brilliance ensuring that the worlds he reclaimed for the Imperium suffered minimal damage and quickly became a functioning part of the Imperium. Soon Macragge was the centre of a five-hundred world realm known as Ultramar that became an exemplar of what human civilisation could become. When the Warmaster Horus turned against the Emperor, sent the Word Bearers Legion to assault Ultramar before summoning the massive warp anomaly known as the Runestorm to isolated Guilliman in the galactic south when so that the renegades could marched on Terra without interference from the largest of all the Legions.

Although Guilliman arrived too late to save his father or play any great role in the Horus Heresy, he was instrumental in holding the Imperium together in the war's aftermath, and his Ultramarines comprised nearly half of the Imperium's manpower in those dark days. Assuming the title of Lord Commander of the Imperium, Guilliman reorganised humanities armed forces and implemented his Codex Astartes, which broke down the Space Marine Legions into thousand-man chapters so that no one renegade could command such an awesome force. Guilliman led the armies of Mankind for a time until Fulgrim, transformed into a Daemon Prince of Slaanesh, slit his throat with a poisoned sword. The wound being fatal and incurable, Guilliman was put in stasis and enthroned in the Shrine of the Primarch within the Fortress of Hera for thousands of years.

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• The Ace: Guilliman is the logistical and strategic Ace of the Primarchs with a peerless grasp of both battlefield tactics and civilian government. Where many of his brothers had risen to be the dominant force on their home worlds when they were reunited with the Emperor, Guilliman had become the ruler of the entire star system and went on to create a stellar empire of over five-hundred worlds that was a model for the wider Imperium. Guilliman's battle record also showed his skills in this field, with the number of worlds reclaimed for humanity second only to that of the Warmaster Horus himself. In the aftermath of the Horus Heresy, Guilliman's skills helped hold the battered Imperium together, reorganising its military and government while lending his tactical knowledge to help hold off opportunistic Xenos raiders and putting down the remnants of rebellion amongst the remaining loyalist worlds.
• Adopted into Royalty: Unlike most of the Primarchs who, at best, were adopted by local tribal chieftains before rising to great power, Guilliman was adopted by one of the planetary rulers of Macragge and therefore was brought-up in a privileged position. Subverted in that his adoptive father, Konor, was a genuine man of the people trying to reform Macragge's feudal aristocracy into a republican meritocracy.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: Guilliman's ability to process information and apply it quickly served him well both on and off the battlefield. While he can sometimes be caught off-guard when facing an unknown foe, or those using unconventional tactics he hasn't encountered, he is able to learn from his experiences very quickly to avoid being caught off-guard again. This ability was aptly displayed when his brother, Corvus Corax, challenged him to a series of simulated battles. Guilliman lost the first three rounds completely due to Corax' unconventional guerrilla warfare tactics but, once he learned from his defeats, Guilliman crushed the Primarch of the Raven Guard every single time.
• Badass Boast: During the Battle of Calth, after surviving for ten hours in hard vacuum without a space suit and appearing by punching the heads off several Word Bearer Legionaries:
  Whatever does not kill me... is not trying hard enough.
• Batman Grabs a Gun: While the Ultramarines themselves claim it is Alpha Legion misinformation, there are reports that Guilliman was forced to break his own strict rules of operation and lead a reckless, unsupported assault against Alpharius' command centre so that he could take the Alpha Legion Primarch off-guard and slay him.
• Boring, but Practical: Guilliman exemplifies this trope to the highest degree. Guilliman is dull in-universe, and his specialty including his elite troops were considered 'vanilla' both out of universe as well as in-universe too. Yet, his mastery over politics and logistics makes Guilliman the single-most important Primarch in the grand scheme of things. Guilliman does not need flashy troops or impressive fortress defences brimming with gold to make a point. He just needs some pen and paper and he is able to craft a mini-Empire in the Eastern Fringe that stood as an exemplary of Imperial rule for 10,000 years. Not even Dorn's own mini-Empire of Inwit came close to the levels of longevity and prosperity that is Ultramar.
• Crazy-Prepared: One of Guilliman's strengths was his attention to detail, making him gifted in statesmanship and logistics, and he always believed in making contingency plans for almost every eventuality. Unfortunately, many of his fellow Primarchs interpreted this tendency as Guilliman being an overly ambitious micromanager. An example of this was his plan for how to deal with the death of the Emperor, which entailed preserving as much of the Imperium as possible and re-organizing the remnants into the "Imperium Secundus", centred around his own realm of Ultramar.
• Dead Guy on Display: After being mortally wounded by his daemonic brother Fulgrim, Guilliman was held in stasis, mere moments from death, and set on display in Shrine of the Primarch within the Fortress of Hera's Temple of Correction, until his resurrection at the outbreak of Abaddon's 13th Black Crusade.
• Dub Name Change: In the earlier publications localized into German, his name was changed to "Roboute Guillaume" (likely a persistent typo), but GW changed that back in an effort to harmonize the names of units, characters, etc. .
• Fatal Flaw: Guilliman's obsessive need for control and orthodoxy, along with his dissemination of his battle strategies, meant his thinking was often predictable and inflexible as it took him time to adapt to unknown situations. It was this predictability that enabled Fulgrim to ambush his brother’s fleet at the Battle of Thessala, leading to their fateful duel.
• Foil: Guilliman and Lorgar, the Primarch of the Word Bearers had very similar principles and desires. Both brothers desired to raise the Imperium, they weren't conquerors but builders who believed that Astartes could be something else than warriors, and they both valued an introspective view of life. The difference between the two was the methods they used, with Lorgar using faith while Guilliman preferred a more secular, meritocratic method to unite humanity and make it the best it could be.
• Genius Bruiser: As well as being a superb tactician ad statesman, Guilliman was also a superbly talented warrior. Of the four brothers he fought before his confinement to a stasis field in the Fortress of Hera, he only lost to two of them, the rage-filled Angron (who had help from one of his other brothers) and Fulgrim after his apotheosis.
• The Good King: Guilliman is practically the living manifestation of the Emperor's administrative skill, which was then further harnessed by his education and raising by the ruling Consul of his homeworld of Macragge. Even in the 41st Millenium, the Realm of Ultramar that he created is arguably the jewel of the Imperium, rivaled only by Holy Terra itself. Its worlds are bereft of the rampant sociopolitical corruption and environmental pollution that plagues many of the Imperium's more "civilized worlds" (to the point where even the Hive Worlds in Ultramar aren't overpopulated and still have breathable atmospheres, farmable fields, and fishable oceans) and the average citizen enjoys a form of social agency, quality of life, technological access, and longevity that many other worlds can only hope to give to the lower nobility.
• Heart Is an Awesome Power: Guilliman's unique trademark ability isn't mighty psychic powers, skill in the creation of powerful artefacts and new technologies, or a natural affinity for a certain style of warfare but being able to absorb and process information at an astonishing rate and an accompanying skill at logistics. Far from relegating him to an administrator role (although he excels in such roles), he uses it to become The Ace through Awesomeness by Analysis and being Crazy-Prepared for every eventuality.
• Insufferable Genius: Guilliman's supreme strategic skill often led to him stating that he could improve upon the tactics and methods of his brothers, something few of the strong willed Primarchs appreciated. As a result, he wasn't particularly close to many of his brothers, with even some of those that he liked and respected not returning the sentiment.
• Jack of All Trades: Unlike many of his brother Primarchs, Guilliman did not dedicate himself to a single style of warfare, preferring to practice a wide variety of tactical options so that his Legion could deal with any possible foes and adapt to any battlefield situation.
• Jerkass: Guilliman didn't get along with many of his brother Primarchs, making it pretty clear he considered them to be untrustworthy. Angron also correctly pointed out that Guilliman's patrician, privileged upbringing, compared to most of the other Primarchs, caused him to have trouble empathizing with and understanding them, leading him to come across as insensitive. In addition to this, his Insufferable Genius tendencies led him to ignore others' feelings, most notably when he enforced the splitting of the Legiones Astartes into 1000-Marine Chapters under the Codex Astartes, which almost caused a second civil war amongst the remaining Loyalist Primarchs. Subverted in that many of Guilliman's traits and actions were often misinterpreted or exaggerated in the minds of his brothers (Lorgar thought for years that Roboute despised him, even though the only thing the Ultramarines' Primarch did was follow the orders of his father when his forces destroyed Monarchia), something Guilliman himself was aware of, saying that he didn't want the Throne because of how people often thought that he was so ambitious to the point of opportunism and he felt that he should stop being an overachiever because others were feeling inadequate.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Guilliman never did anything without a reason and even his most provocative moments had logic behind them.
  • Despite butting heads with his brothers on more than one occasion, he was completely accurate in predictions that the flaws of various primarchs he criticized would end badly. He highlighted Angron's uncontrollable rage, Magnus' reckless use of his psyker powers, Fulgrim's vanity, and most tellingly Horus' ambition.
  • Splitting up the legions may have riled his brothers, but Guilliman was absolutely correct in pointing out that if Horus could fall, any of them could, and it was therefore dangerous to leave one man with so much power.
  • His criticism of his brothers' tactics were usually based on valid concerns rather than just arrogance or obsessive orthodoxy. Especially his position on Alpharius' covert actions: while he did effectively conquer worlds without the need for a costly and destructive military assault, Alpharius's scheming often unnecessarily prolonged the conflicts on the planets when he could have ended it much sooner had it not been for his ego. In the process, he caused months or years of unrest after conquest by undermining government structures and infrastructure that could have been put to use to serve the populace, greatly increasing the difficulty of integrating the planet into the Imperium after conquest.
• Let No Crisis Go to Waste: While he mourned their disappearances, Guilliman also took advantage of the absences of his brothers to split their legions into chapters if they hadn't chosen to do so already. When he wakes up in The Lion: Son of the Forest, El'Jonson is so aggrieved by this opportunistic behavior that he tersely wishes that Roboute had been killed by Horus instead of Sanguinius.
• Momma's Boy: Adorably so. Even near the end of the Great Crusade, Guilliman still depends on Tarasha Euten for her guidance and comfort. When he heard that Tarasha almost got murdered by Konrad Curze, it left a stoic Guilliman visibly distraught. Thousands of years after her death, he still would think back to her example for guidance.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The Imperium Secundus, Guilliman's attempt to restore some modicum of order to the Imperium while the Horus Heresy was still ongoing, was the biggest mistake he made during the period. The endeavour not only diverted crucial troops and resources away from Terra during when they were most needed, his attempt to find a substitute for the Astronomican attracted the Tyranids to the galaxy in the first place according to the Horus Heresy novel Pharos.
• Nice to the Waiter: Unlike a number of his brothers, who could be indifferent if not hostile to regular Imperial citizens, Guilliman treated average individuals with respect and attempted to make their lives better by establishing working governments and defences after bringing their worlds into compliance rather than leave such things to less talented administrators.
• No Historical Figures Were Harmed: As a general on a world heavily based on Ancient Rome, who first came to power after the assassination of his adopted father, greatly expanded an empire, as well as introducing military and governmental reforms, Guilliman was based on the Roman Emperor Augustus.
• No One Could Survive That!: During the Battle of Calth he was ejected into space without a helmet after a daemon attacked his flagship. His Legion feared the worst until they found him ten hours later, punching Word Bearers to death on the hull of the ship. Not even his Primarch biology can fully explain how he spent ten hours fighting in a vacuum without oxygen.
• Parental Substitute: The young Roboute was raised by Konor Guilliman, one of the two ruling consuls of Macragge, and his seneschal Tarasha Euten^note introduced into lore by the Horus Heresy series. The pair had a great influence on the young Primarch's beliefs and outlook, with the meritocratic society that Roboute created after becoming sole consul being the ideal that Konor had always strived for.
• Power Fist: In battle, Guilliman fights with the Hand of Dominion, a masterwork powered gauntlet that incorporates a powerful bolter and was considered a symbol of the Primarch's might. Older lore indicated that Guilliman also fought with the paired power fists of the Gauntlets of Ultramar but this has rarely been depicted in the background material and has never had in-game rules.
• The Proud Elite: Adopted by a planetary ruler, Guilliman often came off as cold and overly analytical to his brothers and, thanks to his insistence he could improve upon their own tactics if he put his mind to it, many of them considered him an Insufferable Genius. Despite this, he really did care and wasn't as arrogant as he appeared, though only a few people got to see that side of him.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Guilliman made a point of listening to his subordinates' ideas and concerns rather than simply assume that he automatically knew better than anyone else as so many of his brothers did.
• Revenge Before Reason: His decision to engage Fulgrim in a duel was strategically unnecessary. Unfortunately Guilliman's usual strategic foresight was clouded by his desire to bring his traitorous brother to justice and he ended up playing right into Fulgrim's hands.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: The account of the battle against the Alpha Legion that saw Guilliman killing Alpharius ends with the Ultramarines' Primarch ordering his troops to disengage, claiming that he had "had no interest fighting a righteous battle against such dishonourable" after the traitors continued their resistance despite the death of the lord. The Ultramarines, however, claim this this battle never happened and that the record is misinformation.
• Single-Stroke Battle: An in-universe account^note that the Ultramarines consider enemy propaganda of the duel between Guilliman and the Alpha Legion Primarch Alpharius depicts it as a single-stroke battle, only without the traditional rush past each other. The account states that the two brothers approached each other on the battlefield, stared one another down, then attacked simultaneously with a lightning quick slice. A few seconds later, Alpharius crumpled over, dead.
• The Smart Guy: While still being a mighty warrior like the other Primarchs, Guilliman's greatest talents lay in statecraft and logistics. Some even claim that the Ultramarines' Primarch inherited the Emperor's capacity for planning and statesmanship.
• The Strategist: Although talented in close combat, Guilliman's greatest asset was his calculating mind, that enabled him to mastermind brilliant campaigns and battles that resulted his Legion bringing more worlds into compliance than almost any other. Some even said that his mind was so sharp that it surpassed even the thinking-engines of the Mechanicum.
• Token Adult: As 1d4chan puts it, Guilliman, and Jaghatai Khan to some extent, share the rare honour of being two of the few Primarchs that actually behaved as adults rather than spoiled, petulant manchildren. In Guilliman's case, it's due to the fact that he was the only Primarch who lost something before the Emperor arrived, namely witnessing the death of his foster father. As such, Guilliman blamed himself rather than the actions of the Emperor, giving him the rare character trait of humility and self-introspection. This means that not only did Guilliman take responsibility for his own flaws, but actively learned from his own mistakes so they wouldn't happen again. Just ask the deposed High Lords of Terra in the 42nd Millennium who learned it the hard way when they attempted a coup against Guilliman in the same manner that got Konor killed.

Current

"Amongst his brothers, none had been more idealistic than Roboute Guilliman. None had envisioned a brighter future, not just for Mankind but also for the warriors of the Legiones Astartes. That flame of hope had been a part of him for as long as he had lived. Even now, as it was smothered by darkness and woe, Guilliman realised that his flame endured."

At the end of the 41st Millennium, the Aeldari mystic Yvraine of the Ynnari and Archmagos Belisarius Cawl of the Adeptus Mechanicus combined arcane technology and xenos magics to revive the mortally wounded Guilliman. Despite only just emerging from millennia suspended between life and death, Guilliman was immediately forced to lead the defense of Ultramar from the ravages of the forces of Chaos before traveling to Terra to consult with his father, having to fight his daemonic brother Magnus along the way. After an audience alone with the Emperor, and defending the Imperial Palace from a daemonic incursion, Guilliman reclaimed his title as Lord Commander of the Imperium and declared the dawning of the Era Indomitus, launching a mighty crusade to restore order to the galaxy.

---

• Ancestral Weapon: Guilliman wields the sword his father used in battle, a weapon that doubles as his badge of office as Lord Commander of the Imperium. Known simply as the Emperor's Sword, the weapon is a Flaming Sword as tall as an armoured Space Marine that is said to still hold a portion of the Emperor's power but, as powerful as the weapon is, Guilliman believes that only his father can unleash its full power.
• Back from the Dead:
  • According to Yvraine, Guilliman's resurrection was a literal one, with him dying the moment they cut the power to his stasis field. However, Ynnead's power and the Armor of Fate immediately revived him.
  • This happens again during the climax of the 3rd book in the Dark Imperium series, when Mortarion infects him with the Godblight, a disease specifically brewed to destroy Primarchs like him. Even the narration clarifies that, yes, the disease outright killed Guilliman... then the Emperor possesses his body, repairs the Armor of Faith, heals his wounds, and uses his body to burn the Garden of Nurgle to the ground. Suffice to say he comes back no worse from wear after that.
• Big Good: Since his return, Guilliman has turned his strategic and administrative prowess to bringing order to the galaxy, attempting to lead humanity to a future as close as possible to the one his father envisioned. In addition to this, as the clone-son of the God-Emperor himself, Guilliman has become a rallying figure for a beleaguered Imperium, a demigod that can keep humanity fighting even through the darkest of times.
• Break the Believer: As a staunch believer in his father's claims that there are no gods and that he is just a man, the revived Guilliman is disgusted to discover that he and the Emperor are now considered to be divine beings by the population of the Imperium. However, as time goes on, Guilliman finds it harder and harder to reconcile the Emperor's abilities and achievements with his claims, and becomes increasingly concerned that Lorgar might have been right all along.
• Broken Ace: Since his return from the brink of death, Guilliman has been horrified by the state of the Imperium and has begun to wonder whether the price required to save Humanity may be too high to bear even with his strategic and logistical brilliance.
• Broken Pedestal: The Dark Imperium novel indicates that, following his resurrection, Guilliman's faith in his father was broken after he met him face to face again and realised that the Emperor never saw him or his brother Primarchs as anything but tools. He now fights for the Emperor's ideals and the Imperium, and not for the Emperor himself.
  Guilliman: I know with unshakeable certainty that I perform the duty I was created for. That I fight for the preservation of mankind.
  Mortarion: Then you do not fight for the Emperor?
  Guilliman: I fight for what He believed in.
• Came Back Strong: Stat wise Guilliman is noticeably stronger than he was during the Horus Heresy due to the Armor of Fate and Emperor's Sword boosting his combat potential.
• The Chains of Commanding: In his private moments, Guilliman has repeatedly expressed sorrow and anger at the weight of being solely responsible for leading and reforming the regressive nightmare that is the modern Imperium of Man. His most secret dream is that one day he could wash his hands of all of it and retire to a simple life on an agri-world.
• The Comically Serious: This is Guilliman's way to make jokes, combined with Self Deprecating Humour.
• Doom Magnet: As the linchpin keeping the Imperium together, and one of the most powerful beings fighting for humanity, Guilliman is a primary target for the forces of Chaos. They have caused untold misery and destruction to the citizens of Ultramar, and the wider Imperium, in their attempts to kill the Avenging Son.
• The Dreaded: Guilliman has become a figure of fear amongst daemonkind due to the fact that his resurrection wasn't foreseen by Tzeentch until it was almost too late and because the sword he inherited from his father can permanently kill daemonic entities.
• Expy: Guilliman shares a number of similarities with Karl Franz from Warhammer Fantasy. Much like his Fantasy counterpart, Guilliman has taken up the daunting task of saving a corrupt and failing empire while wielding a legendary weapon belonging to said empire's founder. Both were also struck down by a champion of Nurgle before a God-Emperor possessed their bodies, revived them and turned the tide of battle.
• Fish out of Temporal Water: After spending so long in stasis, Guilliman has 10,000 years of history to catch up on, and to say he's angry about how the Imperium he fought for during the Great Crusade has been succeeded by an ignorant and corrupt theocracy would be a severe understatement. He constantly notes how everything, from art to administration, technology, and even the mindset of the Imperium's inhabitants has regressed.
• Flaming Sword: Guilliman took up his father's flaming sword after being named Lord Commander of the Imperium in the aftermath of the Horus Heresy and still wields it after his resurrection. The weapon is incredibly powerful, with a stat line equivalent to the melee weapons used by Dreadnoughts with the additional chance of causing multiple mortal wounds.
• Four-Star Badass: Guilliman is as capable a fighter as he is a general. Right after he's revived, he cleared the Shrine of invading Chaos Marines, killing one with each slash of his sword. But his real strength lies in his tactical genius, as his directing the battlefield immediately turns every skirmish into a Curb-Stomp Battle for the loyalists.
• Generation Xerox: Since his resurrection, Guilliman has found himself behaving more and more like his father once did; launching a massive crusade to reunite humanity with the aid of a new breed of superhuman warriors.
• Good Is Not Soft: Guilliman may be one of the few authority figures in the Imperium trying to be diplomatic, but he's more than willing to ruthlessly dispose of those who mistake his softer approach for weakness. See what happened to the High Lords who thought they could arrange his assassination for an example of what happens to those who underestimate him.
• Heroic Second Wind: Gains a pretty epic one during his duel with Magnus on Luna. Despite being heavily injured and buried under tons of metal he manages to will himself back on his feet, determined to not let one of his traitorous brothers keep him from his duty yet again.
• He's Back!: A variation. Guilliman was fatally wounded by Fulgrim and placed in a stasis field at the verge of death. He stayed that way for a good 10,000+ years, but the events of The Gathering Storm has brought him back to save the day.
• Holding Back the Phlebotinum: Dark Imperium hints that Guilliman may actually be a psyker. He has kept his powers hidden because of what happened to Magnus.
• Humble Hero: Well, as humble as one could get while still being a genetically-engineered semi-divine posthuman superman. For instance, he kept his old nanny around as his counselor, and to tell him the things he didn't want to hear. Another instance was when he thought the Emperor was dead and the Imperium on the verge of collapsing; rather than take control himself, he elected to name another Primarch as the Emperor's successor, and eventually settled on Sanguinius. Upon his return in the 41st Millennium, he formally requests the right to assume command of the Ultramarines from Chapter Master Calgar.
• I Lied: In exchange for Cypher's aid in escaping captivity by the forces of Chaos in the Maelstrom, he swore to bring Cypher to meet with the Emperor himself. Upon arriving at the entrance to the Golden Throne, he ordered to Custodes to arrest the rogue Dark Angel instead, believing the sword Cypher carried to be an ill omen and Cypher too dangerous to allow near the Emperor. For Guilliman to break his word so blatantly to a man who had saved both his life and those of his men is not something he would have done lightly, but the safety of the Emperor and therefore the Imperium itself was far too much to risk for Cypher's ambiguous aims. Guilliman was right to do so, as upon breaking out of the cells in which he was being kept, Cypher made an attempt on the life of the Emperor, getting within striking distance of the Golden Throne. Moreover, it is implied he only aborted that attempt so that he could play an unseen role in the return of the Lion, meaning that Guilliman's caution paid out in dividends.
• Irony: Guilliman originally broke up the Space Marine Legions to ensure that no man ever held the same amount of power that Horus did, while also trying to keep the Imperium's military and civilian leadership separate. The ironic part is that in his current position as Imperial Regent and Lord Commander of the Imperium, Guilliman now holds more power than Horus ever did. His role of Imperial Regent is also the same one he refused to take during the Horus Heresy when he created the Imperium Secundus, desperately hoping for any of his brothers to show up so he could place one of them in charge instead. He himself acknowledges that saving the Imperium may require him to become the very kind of tyrant he once feared.
• Knight in Sour Armor: The Trauma Conga Line he endured after being freed from the stasis field has left him understandably very bitter. Despite this, he still acts to protect humanity and uphold his past ideals.
• Large and in Charge: As of Era Indomitus. Guilliman is the Lord Commander of the Imperium, second to only the Emperor in authority. He is also really, really big and willing to take more liberal reforms of the Imperium. His power is such that he can tell the Inquisition to piss off and they can only grumble in response.
• Last of His Kind: When he returned, he was this. At the time of his resurrection, there were no other Loyalist Primarchs known to be openly active in the galaxy. All the others were of dubious status (Vulkan, Leman Russ, Jaghatai Khan, Rogal Dorn), otherwise occupied (Corax, Alpharius), or confirmed to be dead (Ferrus Manus, Sanguinius). This ended with the return of the Lion at the end of the Arks of Omen campaign.
• Living Legend: For the people of the present-day Imperium, Guilliman is a literal example of this trope; a mythical figure from ancient legend who has returned to aid the Imperium in its darkest hour.
• Lonely at the Top: Being the only active Loyalist Primarch in the 42nd Millennium (prior to the Lion's return) really did a number on Roboute, as he lacked anyone who he can truly confide in. This, coupled with the realization that his father never really cared about him or his brothers, has left him feeling rather depressed.
• Man in the Machine: It was heavily implied during Rise of the Primarch that the Armor of Fate was the only thing keeping Guilliman alive, and that he shouldn't take it off. However, later stories show that Guilliman is perfectly fine in casual or formal clothing merely a few weeks after he arrived on Terra. The Armor of Fate short story shows just what he had to do to get it off. It also mentions though that he has been stuck in the armour for several years at that point, and he's fed up with it.
• Mix-and-Match Weapon: Guilliman's ancient Power Fist, the Hand of Dominion, incorporates a powerful, underslung heavy bolter. The weapon has been incorporated into the Primarch’s Armour of Fate, allowing him to unleash powerful attacks at both range and in combat.
• My Greatest Failure: A man in Guilliman's position is going to have some big ones.
  • Not being at Terra to save the Emperor and Sanguinius really did a number on him.
  • Many of the Imperium's current problems can be traced back to his foolish decision to engage Fulgrim at Thessala.
  • His decision to declare the formation of the Imperium Secundus. Though it proved to be a useful rallying point for the scattered forces of the Imperium, it diverted critical resources from the war against Chaos and caused friction with loyalists who thought that he was trying to usurp the Emperor.
• Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: In the modern era, there is little that can pose a threat to Guilliman in battle, but the 30K stories reveal that by the standards of his brother Primarchs, Guilliman was considered only a middling fighter. When faced with any of the Daemon Primarchs, the limits of Guilliman's strength and skill become very apparent. This is also apparent after the Lion's return when El'Jonson defeats Angron in a duel to show how a Daemon Primarch would fare against a warrior-minded Primarch rather than a Badass Bureaucrat.
• Not So Above It All: A funny example that is invoked in-universe. But in Armour of Fate, Guilliman for all intents and purpose, made a Dad joke in front of Cato Sicarius. For Cato, he was shocked that the son of the Emperor would demean himself in such a self-deprecating manner, given how deified Guilliman is in the present Imperium. Sicarius then told him that he wasn't one known for his humour, much to Guilliman's dismay.
  *Guilliman drops some papers due to having to handle them in gauntlets*
  Guilliman: I have the manual dexterity of a Legio Cybernetica battle automaton! Created by the Lord of All Mankind, master of the greatest armies in the Imperium, and I cannot pick up a plastek flimsy. *glares at the offending articles* My greatest enemy.
  Sicarius: (Beat) You are joking, my lord?
  * Guilliman turns to look at Sicarius, having to turn all the way around to do so, as the pauldrons, ornamental wings and large halo mounted on his back make it impossible for him to see over his shoulder*
  Guilliman: At least I stopped knocking into things. There is that. By the Throne, why am I expected to be serious at all times? Yes, Captain Sicarius, I am making light of my predicament. During the worst of the Great Crusade, I was known to make the occasional jest. Even after Terra fell. I did not spend my entire previous life writing deep thoughts into little notebooks, but sometimes dared to enjoy myself. I suppose that was not recorded in the hagiographies.
  Sicarius: Humour is not something you are renowned for, my lord.
  Guilliman: My time in this new age has revealed that to me amply.
• Odd Friendship: "Friendship" is pushing it, but it is revealed in the novella Armour of Fate that Guilliman is acquainted with Eldrad Ulthran of the Aeldari, trusting him enough to ask for advice about whether or not he should take off his life-support armour, a potentially fatal decision by the time he asked. Given how bitter things are betwen the Imperium and Eldar, this was quite a display of trust.
• One-Handed Zweihänder: Double dose of it. First and most obvious is the Emperor's Flaming Sword. Second is on his left arm. Recognize that belt-feed mechanism? That's the same mechanism used in Heavy Bolters, because the Hand of Dominion has a wrist-mounted Heavy Bolter.
• One-Man Army: Like any Primarch he's a force to be reckoned with on the battlefield. This was best demonstrated in the immediate aftermath of his resurrection where he turned the seemingly hopeless Last Stand of the Loyalists defending his shrine into an utter annihilation of the attacking Black Legion forces.
• Only Mostly Dead: He spent the better part of ten thousand years in a stasis field, suspended on the brink of death from his wounds from his battle with the daemonic Fulgrim.
• Only Sane Man: When he was rebirthed and arrived on Terra, Guilliman was the only guy with both the power and the common sense to try and reboot and rework the Imperium. Compared to most of the High Lords which are corrupt, the Inquisition which is self-destructively paranoid, and the Ecclesiarchy which is dogmatically inflexible. Guilliman's reforms are a breath of fresh air in an Imperium that has been choking on a stagnant cloud of its own toxicity for millennia.
  • He's made a point of calling out the unnecessarily brutal policies the Imperium has developed. For example, he's vocally against the practice of deliberately keeping citizens in horrible condition for the sake of breeding stronger potential recruits that multiple Space Marine chapters have adopted. He sees it as not only immoral to subject loyal citizens to such brutality when they were promised a better life in the Imperium, but wasteful and dangerous. On the macro level, it hobbles any potential the world has for contributing to the Imperium beyond the trickle of recruits for one Chapter and makes defecting to Chaos or Xenos more attractive to the populace as destitute people have nothing to lose in the bargain. On the micro level, the resources required to turn a half-starved, diseased wretch into a functional Astartes make whatever traits a hard life brought to the recruits' initial mental states a negligible benefit at best.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Since his resurrection Guilliman has become more prone to intense bouts of rage, mostly due to the sheer frustration of trying to run the backwards present day Imperium. A Custodian was notably concerned by this, as this was not a trait Guilliman was known for previously.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: One of the first quotes from him revealed after his revival? It's not a happy one. Also doubles as an Armor-Piercing Question.
  Why do I still live? What more do you want from me? I gave everything I had to you, to them. Look what they've done to our dream. This bloated, rotting carcass of an empire is not driven by reason and hope, but by fear, hate and ignorance. Better that we all burned in the fires of Horus' ambition than lived to see this.
  • He chewed out Dante for leaving the citizens of Baal in horrendous conditions for the sake of breeding stronger recruits for the Blood Angels.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Guilliman has attempted to lead with diplomacy, fairness, and an open mind as he did in the ancient past. The problem is that most in the modern Imperium are so accustomed to various forms of tyranny that they find this style of leadership completely alien. Particularly since almost everyone he speaks to thinks of him as a demigod in the flesh. The constant misunderstandings and culture shock frustrate Guilliman to no end.
• Resurrection Sickness: After being resurrected, he feels a "deep, gnawing ache" constantly. He suspects that this pain will never leave him. This hasn't been mentioned once since his second resurrection with the aid of the Emperor itself. Whether it just hasn't been brought up or the second resurrection cured this somehow hasn't been made clear.
• Scars Are Forever: Guilliman still sports the scar on his neck from where Fulgrim nearly killed him.
• Self-Deprecation: Guilliman during the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy days, was known to have a secret sense of humour with his sons and pokes fun of himself from time to time. Unfortunately, by the turn of the 42nd Millennium, Guilliman's deification was so great that when he tried to make fun of himself, Cato Sicarius only questioned whether it was meant to be a joke, exasperating Guilliman in the process.
• Stop Worshipping Me: Guilliman was not too happy to learn that he and his brothers are now worshiped alongside their father in the present day Imperium.
• Take Up My Sword: Due to the Emperor's continued confinement to the Golden Throne, Guilliman now serves as the de facto leader of the Imperium. For added symbolism he has also literally taken up his father's sword to fight the enemies of mankind.
• Take That!: An in-universe example. But in Dark Imperium, after having a talk with Uriel Ventris over Guilliman's regrets. Roboute threw some shade over Perturabo's effort in indepedent governance over his defunct Empire of Iron.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork:
  • With Cawl. Guilliman relies on Cawl's genius and innovation but balks at his rather blatant and shameless borderline-heretical ideas. This is why Guilliman has so far refused to grant Cawl's request to promote him to Fabricator-General. Guilliman's reforms are also putting him increasingly at odds with the more traditionalist parts of the Imperium. Elements of the Inquisition are particularly wary of him.
  • This is also the case with the High Lords of Terra. The High Lords have enjoyed absolute power for millennia now, much of which is due to their own corruption and Guilliman aims to take that away. However, none of them are willing to openly defy Guilliman as, due to him being the direct gene-son of the Emperor himself and being appointed Lord Commander of the Imperium, each of the High Lords risk losing the support of all those under him on a bad gamble. Similarly, Guilliman would very much like to get rid of them, but also risks the same supporters remaining loyal with the High Lords. The massive bureaucracy of the Imperium also means that, corrupt as they are, the High Lords are the only ones who can keep the Imperium functioning. So the two are just barely tolerating each other so everything doesn't completely fall apart.
  • He and the Ecclesiarchy are on uneasy terms as well. Guilliman finds their very existence offensive to his and the Emperor's goals for a secular humanity. Given his choice, he'd have the whole organization torn down to the last brick. Unfortunately for him, the church is so central to the Imperium's political and military structure that he simply can't be rid of them. On their side, Guilliman spreading the truth about the past contradicts the mythology that has built up over the millenia, offending them on a deeply personal level and threatens their political power. The only reason the higher-ups haven't tried to assassinate him is because his status as the Emperor's son would ensure that at least half of the organization would rebel and declare a holy war on the perpetrators. As of now, the two sides have a working relationship that is at best uneasy. More than once has Guilliman threatened a priest who got a little too enthusiastic about proselytizing the "holy word" to him.
• Trauma Conga Line: By the Throne... this list is going to be long.
  • His adoptive father, Konor Guilliman, who instilled many aspects of Roboute's better nature and sense of noble obligation to the common people, was assassinated by an uprising and betrayal of his fellow Consul and nobles of Macragge, upset at Konor and Roboute's reforms weakening their power.
  • During the Horus Heresy, as warp storms and several diversion actions from the traitor forces isolated Ultramar from Terra, Roboute heard rumors that Terra and the Emperor had fallen. With such info being potentially credible, Roboute decided to form the Imperium Secundus. While it certainly proved useful as a rally point for the various scattered Loyalist forces, it didn't exactly endear Guilliman to a number of his fellow loyalists, with some wondering if he was making his own power play to usurp the Emperor, despite him trying to prove that view wrong.
  • Upon hearing that in reality, the Imperium, Terra, and the Emperor were still standing, but under siege, Guilliman mustered all loyalist forces possible from the Ultramar region to make haste and provide assistance. Unfortunately, by the time the Ultramarines themselves managed to arrive, the damage was already done: his brother Sanguinius was dead, the Emperor was dying, the traitors had fled, and the Imperium was reeling in the aftermath of the events. This failure in particular haunted Guilliman forever more, and in turn he issued his order that an Ultramarine Auxilary unit be posted at Cadia to try and make amends.
  • The shock of being revived millennia in the future and learning what's happened to the Imperium since he fell is unimaginable. He puts on a strong face and hides it to avoid demoralizing the men. Seeing Terra itself is even worse.
  • To even get to Terra after his revival, due to the galaxy-wide warp storm outbreak since Cadia's fall, involved a literal trip through hell. Magnus The Red cast a spell that flung Roboute's Terran Crusade fleet into the notorious warpstorm known as the Maelstrom, trapping the fleet in there for months, with the Demons of Chaos doing what they could to exact an extreme mental toll on everyone. At one point, by using Guilliman's own built-up negative emotions of grief, despair, and anger, several forces of Tzeentch managed to use a spell that bound Guilliman and captured his forces. By the time his forces managed to reach Luna, all 100+ ships of the fleet that launched from Ultramar were either scattered somewhere in the galaxy, lost in the warp, destroyed, or captured, with all crew captured or killed, and only a few thousand Marines, Celestine's Sisters of Battle, and Techmagos Cawl's Skitarii remained.
  • When he finally makes it to the Sanctum Imperialis and meets his father the Emperor? As revealed in Dark Imperium, he learns that his father never saw him and his brothers as his sons, but merely as tools and weapons to be used. Guilliman is understandably embittered by this revelation as he leaves the Sanctum Imperialis.
  • After that, just when the Indomitus Crusade started winding down, his own beloved home system of Ultramar was attacked by the forces of Nurgle. Guilliman just cannot catch a break.
• Unreliable Narrator: Was subjected to this during the thousands of years he was in stasis, with the historical records of his deeds and battles getting distorted into conflicting myths and legend. The Battle of Thessala, where he was fatally wounded by Fulgrim, is a prime example of this, as earlier depictions of the battle had the two primarchs fight each other on the surface of the planet, with the Ultramarines arriving at the scene to find Guilliman unconscious, with Fulgrim nowhere to be seen. Dark Imperium reveals this version to be false, with the duel occurring onboard Fulgrim's flagship above Thessala, which is revealed to be a gas giant. After his revivification, he discovers no less than twenty-six divergent versions of the event in the Ultramarines' librariums alone.
  • On the other hand, Roboute has actively tried to defy this convention personally by writing a detailed history of the Empire in the 41st Millennium devoid of misinformation, lies, and propaganda. He then makes it freely available to every citizen of the Imperium so that they can better know the truth.
• Unwanted Revival: To say that he was less than enthusiastic about the galaxy he was woken up to would be a severe understatement.
• What the Hell, Hero?: In Devastation of Baal, he harshly criticizes the Blood Angels' decision to keep Baal's moons as irradiated wastelands in order to obtain stronger recruits, stating that forcing its people to live in hellish conditions alienates them from their leaders and is precisely what sends them into the arms of Chaos.
  It has long been in your capability to transform these worlds. Baal Primus is dead, but you need not let your remaining people suffer unnecessarily. Will they fight any better for dwelling on a world that kills them? By sacrificing their children to the Emperor's service, they have earned a better life. Once you have torn that blasphemy down, raise up the population of Baal Secundus. Teach them what we are fighting for. A line must be drawn between what is good and what is evil, for if the Great Enemy comes with offers of power to a wretch, what reason does he have to refuse hell if he dwells in it already?
• The Worf Effect: While Guilliman gets to show off his power facing most opponents, he tends to fare quite poorly when faced against any of his Daemon Primarch former brothers. Even being armed with the Emperor's sword hasn't been enough to close the gap. This is justified considerably by the fact that, powerful as Guilliman is, he's ten millennia behind his Daemonic Primarch brethren in honing their gifted potential and thus he stands to be an off-foot fighting them by sheer experience of what they are capable of.
• You're Not My Father: Guilliman alongside Jaghatai Khan were the only two Primarchs that did not view the Emperor as a good father. Guilliman went one step further and stated to Mathieu in Dark Imperium that the Emperor - despite being his genetic creator - is not his father, Konor was. This is not surprising given that Guilliman was the only one that was brought up in a normal nuclear family. With how much influence Konor had in bringing up Guilliman, Konor being more of a real father than the Emperor is an actual correct assessment.

Vulkan, Primarch of the Salamanders

It is in our nature to create things that will outlast us. So we strive; we craft, we build, we make, we fight and do not yield. For within each frail human body is the will to grasp the stars and walk a path into eternity itself.

— The Book of Vulkan

Vulkan was scattered to the volcanic world of Nocturne, where he was raised as a blacksmith and quickly surpassed his masters in expertise and skill. When Dark Eldar raiders came during his fourth year, the Primarch refused to flee, took up his hammers, and inspired his people to stand against the invaders. During the celebrations that followed, a pale-skinned stranger appeared and challenged Vulkan to feats of strength and skill. While trying to bring back a trophy fire drake, the outlander gave up his own chance at victory to save Vulkan's life. Vulkan was declared the winner but bent his knee and swore that any man who valued life over pride was worthy of his service.

The outlander was of course the Emperor, who placed Vulkan in command of the XVIII Legion, soon to be renamed the Salamanders in honor of the beasts of Nocturne. Vulkan's legion became known for facing down overwhelming odds, ferocious short-ranged firefights, and its stubborn defense of humanity. This led to friction between Vulkan and more callous Primarchs, and he and Konrad Curze came to blows over the Night Lords' tactics during a joint operation, which Vulkan reported to Horus and Rogal Dorn.

Vulkan's fate is uncertain - it is known that he was present at the Drop Site Massacres, and that he survived that battle only to be captured and tortured by the Night Haunter. He disappeared at some point after the Horus Heresy, and re-emerged during the War of the Beast, during which he may have been killed again fighting the Beast itself, but the Salamanders' subsequent Chapter Masters consider their position that of regent. To this day, the chapter's Forgefathers search the galaxy for relics Vulkan created, so that once all are collected their Primarch can return to them.

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• Arch-Enemy:
  • He always had problems with his brother Konrad Curze for his brutality, but their enmity became much more intense and personal before the outbreak of the Heresy. By then, Curze was so far gone that he decided to put all his effort into breaking Vulkan physically and psychologically just to prove that Vulkan wasn't that different than he was.
  • On a less personal level, he and his legion despise the Dark Eldar for their history of raiding Nocturne to kidnap citizens for torture. The enmity endures so strongly that the Salamanders still maintain an attack on sight order towards all Eldar to this day — in extremely rare or desperate situations they're willing to hear non-Dark Eldar out but they won't be happy about it.
• Being Good Sucks: Vulkan tries to be as kind and honorable as his role allows. This usually ends up costing him greatly. Especially when Kurze got his claws onto him.
• Beware the Nice Ones: It was rare to see Vulkan truly angry, but the times he finally lost his temper show just how terrifying he could really be.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: Vulkan refuses to give up on civilians as long as he can save them. This tendency extended to his legion, which lead to them quickly draining their numbers before he arrived to teach them to be less self-destructive about it.
• Continuity Snarl: Sweet Emperor...
  • In older fluff, Vulkan is said to have argued with Guilliman over breaking down the Legions, and is said to have vanished about a thousand years after the Heresy.
  • The Horus Heresy retcons this, and has him going insane at Curze's hands before being permanently(?) killed well before that.
  • 5th Edition THEN dropped hints that he was part of Trazyn the Infinite's collection. The Fall of Cadia then proved that to not be the case.
  • All of the previous stories were published over about a decade. During that decade, the Codex: Space Marines rulebook was reprinted 3 times, and presents its own unchanging story: Vulkan dropped a book of riddles at Istvaan V, and vanished without further trace.
  • While all of the stories are mutually exclusive, the Codex one and the Horus Heresy one get special mention for conflicting one another directly (in Codex, Vulkan's book of riddles orders the Salamanders to find an artifact called The Unbound Flame, which they search for to this day; in Horus Heresy, The Unbound Flame is Vulkan's coffin, christened after he died, and has been owned by the Salamanders for nine thousand years).
  • The Beast Arises cleaned up some while adding some. Vulkan was the last active loyalist Primarch; however he has been in self-imposed exile. He still thought Dorn was alive and had no clue about the Second Founding. He later becomes somehow suffused with the energies of the WAAAGH! and attempts to kill The Beast at the cost of his life... and fails.
  • A big part of the problem is that he has Resurrective Immortality. So just because he's dead at the end of a story doesn't mean he didn't pop up again before the next one. He's also been resurrected from stuff even a Perpetual can't recover from on-screen at least once.
• Death by Materialism: Nearly fell victim to it during the end of his competition with the Outlander. Vulkan tumbled over a cliff and hung there for hours by one hand, unwilling to drop the fire drake he was holding in his other and therefore concede the contest. Luckily the Emperor found him and dropped his own drake corpse to make a bridge across the lava.
• Determinator: He endured months of repeated psychological and physical torment at the hands of Curze without breaking. During the Siege of Terra, he confronted a shade of the now-daemonic Magnus. Despite his brother blasting him with enough power to repeatedly kill him, Vulkan kept getting up to block his path.
• Everyone Has Standards: While he and his Legion did favor the Kill It with Fire approach, Vulkan rejected the use of weapons like rad and phosphex, believing such things should stay in the Dark Age. Indeed, in the novel Old Earth, the Emperor tells Vulkan that he specifically engineered the Primarch to reject the use of extreme weaponry specifically because he only trusted a Primarch with great empathy and incorruptible morality to be able to build and then judge whether or not to use such weaponry.
• Face of a Thug: In other settings, the eleven foot tall, musclebound warrior in spiked armor, carrying a dragon-themed war hammer, with ebony-black skin and glowing red eyes would probably be the Big Bad. In an amusing twist, Vulkan is instead one of the kindest and most humane beings in the setting. The man is large enough to look down at Rogal Dorn, but that just means his heart is enormous too, and he is known and beloved for his compassion to all of the Emperor's citizens.
• Fiery Stoic: Vulkan and his Legion are heavily fire-themed, but he was known for his patience and restraint. One of the first lessons he gave his sons was to not let their passion overwhelm their logic and self-preservation.
• Gentle Giant: He's probably the nicest guy out of all the Primarchs as well as the largest (unless Magnus uses his power to change size). It's said that Vulkan embodied the Emperor's (at times hidden) compassion for humanity. This ties in with his mastery of the forge, as the Emperor engineered him to have both traits so that only Vulkan could forge the mightiest weapons of the Dark Age of Technology and have the moral fiber and compassion to reject or destroy those same weapons if they were too terrible.
• Good Is Not Soft: For all his famed kindness, Vulkan could be a terrifying force when roused. He had no issues whatsoever with burning his opponents to death or conquering entire worlds if he thought it would be better for them in the long run.
• Immortal Life Is Cheap: Once his nature as a Perpetual was discovered, Vulkan started finding himself in an improbable number of situations capable of killing a man even more durable than normal for a Primarch. Curze took special delight in arranging most of these, but Vulkan kept finding them on his own later.
• Immortality Hurts: During his battle with Magnus, Vulkan privately lamented the fact that his immortality means that he is often required to endure the pain of multiple deaths to do his duty. His time as Konrad's prisoner was the worst example of this for him: the pain of repeatedly being tortured to death was so terrible that he required the assistance of the Emperor just to keep himself from going insane.
• Irony: He was made to be compassionate by the Emperor so he would recognize which weaponry would be too powerful or horrific to ever use...while his chapter specializes in making and using weapons that burns their enemies alive. The stuff he nixed must have really been quite something!
• Just the First Citizen: Despite being a Primarch, he discouraged his soldiers' shows of deference and insisted that his legion was one of equals.
• King in the Mountain: The Salamanders believe that Vulkan is still alive and will return to them in their hour of need if they collect his nine relics. Currently, he's in a stasis capsule in an unknown location in space that is marked with the name of one of the relics.
• Kneel Before Frodo: Vulkan made his debut reinforcing companies of Salamanders who had been trying to save planetary populations from a vast horde of Orks. The Space Marines knelt before their Primarch, who immediately told them to rise and then knelt before them in honor of their sacrifices.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Vulcan was the Roman god of the forge.
  • Vulkan created the Promethean creed. Prometheus was a Greek deity who gave fire to humanity, knowing it would cause him torment. Vulkan's legion is especially known for safeguarding and helping humanity, even if it means losing their lives.
• My Greatest Failure: Losing himself to rage and killing the peaceful population of a planet, starting with an Eldar child, haunted Vulkan ever since.
• Nemean Skinning: Wears Kesare's Mantle, a fire drake skin that gives him an invulnerable save and additional protection against melta or flamer weapons.
• Nice Guy: Fearsome appearance aside, Vulkan was one of the two kindest Primarchs, by far. The other being Sanguinius.
• No Man Should Have This Power: After the Heresy, he had the doomsday weapons the Emperor ordered him to create destroyed. Seeing someone like Horus fall to pride and Chaos convinced Vulkan that no one, not even himself, was incorruptible enough to avoid temptation to abuse such powerful items. Only nine of them survived, each for a specific purpose. These would become known as the Nine Artifacts of Vulkan.
• Not So Similar: During his final confrontation with Konrad Curze, Vulkan admitted that Curze wasn't wrong that he was just as capable of violence as Curze, but, unlike his sadistic brother, Vulkan wouldn't give in to it for pleasure or satisfaction.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
  • He gave one to Curze when escaping his confinement, saying that his obsession with trying to make others fear him was a childish attempt to mask his own insecurities and that all of the other Primarchs pitied him.
  • He gives another to Magnus during his attack on the Imperial Palace. Vulkan tells his fallen brother that he blames others for his own arrogance and self-centered actions. That for all his lamentations and rage for Prospero, much of the blame for letting the situation escalate was on Magnus himself obsessing over his guilt and self-pity instead of thinking of how to save his people or what is best for humanity.
• Resurrective Immortality: Like his father, Vulkan is a Perpetual able to regenerate From a Single Cell. In the wake of the Drop Site Massacres, Vulkan was captured by the Night Lords and tortured by the Night Haunter himself, who killed Vulkan multiple times in extravagantly violent and torturous ways but was frustrated by his returning to life every time.
• Scary Black Man: Vulkan is the tallest, largest, and one of the physically strongest of the Primarchs, not to mention his obsidian black skin and fire red eyes, and as such his figure presents him as a great and intimidating man; despite his appearance, Vulkan is at the top of the Primarchs regarding caring, niceness, and kindness. When the Dark Eldar are involved though, Vulkan become an unstoppable engine of destruction.
• Screw You, Elves!: To the Dark Eldar. He fought back an entire planetary invasion army of these guys with nothing but a pair of blacksmith hammers. And this was BEFORE he even knew that he was a Primarch!
• Secret-Keeper: Vulkan was tasked to create doomsday weapons. The Emperor trusted him with this above any of his brother Primarchs because Vulkan's compassionate nature would ensure that he would never allow these weapons to be used unless there was truly no other option.
• Superpower Lottery: Sure, all the Primarchs are blessed in some way, but Vulkan was made to be the strongest, creates the best weapons AND is a perpetual on top of that.
• Token Minority: Along with Jaghatai Khan, among the Primarchs. Every other Primarch is some variation of white or of ambiguous race, with the exception of Magnus.
• Ultimate Blacksmith: The weapons and relics that he created are amongst the most powerful and sought after that the Imperium has ever had. The reason why Vulkan hid or destroyed so many of them was because the Emperor engineered him to be compassionate, so he could recognize which weapons were too powerful or horrific and never use them.
• Weapon-Based Characterization: Vulkan is direct, powerful, and a craftsman; naturally, he prefers hammers. For example, Dawnbreaker, with which Vulkan could send battle tanks flying, or make a Shockwave Stomp to knock over groups of infantry. By M32 he was using Doomtremor, which can absorb and redirect incoming energy attacks, and was so heavy that it took a squad of Terminator-armored Astartes to lift it off the ground.
• World's Strongest Man: Vulkan was second only to the Emperor himself in terms of pure physical strength. To put this into perspective, the average Primarch is capable of rending reinforced armor barehanded and surviving explosives with minor wounds at worst. Vulkan was so strong that he had to deliberately hold back whenever sparring with his brothers because he knew that unrestrained blows from him would have killed them. His ''fight'' with Konrad Curze proved he was right to hold back: despite having endured months of torture and being armed with a depowered weapon, Vulkan faced a fully armed and armored Curze, known as one of the most dangerous combatants of the Primarchs, and tossed him around like a ragdoll.

Corvus Corax, Primarch of the Raven Guard

The First Axiom of Victory is to be other than where the enemy desires you to be.
The First Axiom of Stealth is to be other than where the enemy believes you to be.
The First Axiom of Freedom is that justice without force is powerless; force without justice is tyranny.

— Corvus Corax, from Axioms of the Legiones Astartes, Raven Guard Legion

Corvus Corax was adopted by the miners of Lycaeus, the resource-rich moon of the planet Kiavahr, whose Tech-Guilds had long subjugated the people of Lycaeus. Corax was raised to be his people's liberator, and after years of instruction and preparation, he led a campaign of psychological warfare, sabotage and insurrection that expelled the slavedrivers. Shortly after the moon was renamed Deliverance, the Emperor arrived, and Corax agreed to join the Great Crusade only if his father would bring peace to the now-anarchic Kiavahr.

The XIX Space Marine Legion became the Raven Guard, and adopted Corax's tactics of stealth, covert operations and asymmetrical warfare. Corax was able to quickly study a planet's power structure and determine where to exert pressure to make it crumble, allowing his legion to make conquests without deploying its full force. The Raven Guard was initially part of the Warmaster's vanguard, so that some claim that many of the Luna Wolves' victories should be properly credited to the Raven Guard's undercover actions, but the two Primarchs had a falling out. When they met again, it would be at the Isstvan V Drop Site Massacres, where Corax was betrayed while trying to bring the renegade Warmaster to justice.

Though Corax was able to escape, his legion was all but annihilated. The Raven Guard played what role it could in the Horus Heresy, but to bolster its numbers Corax turned to ancient genetic manipulation techniques that could be used to accelerate the Space Marine creation process, if at considerable risk. The results were monsters that gave even the Space Wolves pause, only one in ten of which could even hold a boltgun. When the Heresy was ended and the Raven Guard was reorganized into successor chapters, Corax personally executed the abominations he had created, and locked himself in his chambers, praying for forgiveness. He emerged after a year and a day, and set a course for the Eye of Terror, never to return.

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• The Ace: His Perception Filter alone means he can kill multiple squads of Astartes before they even realize what's happening. Plus, the fact that he basically has the powers of a Living Saint and can become a being of pure energy (most users of the power can only separate their soul from their body and act with their psychic powers while their bodies remain a helpless target) means he is unkillable except by the most powerful of psychic powers. In a straight fight, he would lose to some of his brothers, but Corvus never did fight fair...
• Big Little Brother: When Corvus Corax first met Nasturi Ephrenia, he was around 9-10 years-old while she was a teenager easily a head taller than him. She immediately became his foster older sister. By the time they were adults, Corvus towered over his sister due to his Primarch bulk.
• BFG: For ranged combat he wielded a heavy bolter as easily as mortal troops would use a lasrifle.
• Bully Hunter: Growing up under the corrupt Tech Guilds of Lycaeus gave Corvus a deep hatred for those who abuse their strength and authority. His main goals during the Crusade were to slaughter any opponents he viewed as tyrannical and free human slaves whenever possible.
• Casting a Shadow: Corax was able to manipulate shadows to an extent.
• Child Prodigy: Upon crashing in Lycaeus, Corvus already had a vast reserve of technical knowledge, knew dozens of languages and could already kill an armed guard. The prisoners of Lycaeus then worked to fill in the gaps in Corvus' mind such as social skills, the history of the planet, and taught him their ideals of liberty and his patience.
• Combat Pragmatist: He wasn't afraid to use assassination and other dirty tricks to win wars, and considered his legion's conquests more important than the specifics of how he made them.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Corvus had an unnerving appearance and is associated with the darkness, but was one of the more noble Primarchs, seeking to save humans from tyranny whenever possible. Even after shedding his humanity and becoming a being of shadow, he still works to save humans from Chaos Marines as much as possible.
  We strike from the darkness, but we are not of the night. Though born in darkness, we seek only the light.
• Doesn't Trust Those Guys: Corvus was the only Primarch, loyalist or otherwise, who did not trust Horus before the Heresy started. Due to his background as a freedom fighter and the incident on Gate 42^note Horus used the Raven Guard essentially as cannon fodder in a direct assault into the guns of an entrenched position, Corvus was the only one who wasn't taken in by Horus' ridiculous charisma, seeing instead an ambitious megalomaniac who was insecure, incredibly arrogant, cocky and easy to corrupt. Whilst other Primarchs either congratulated Horus or became jealous once he was promoted to Warmaster, Corvus felt incredibly uncomfortable at the prospect of Horus having so much power and authority. He felt that, given Horus' bad habit of glory hogging others' achievements, his constant need for validation, and his general disdain of mortals ruling over transhumans, that being promoted to Warmaster would only worsen Horus' already-oversized ego. Corvus feared that sooner or later, Horus' arrogance and insecurities would get the better of him, and that it would only be a matter of when, not if, Horus would eventually attempt a coup on the Emperor. Corvus' predictions became tragically very, very correct.
• Dynamic Entry: Started an open rebellion on his planet with a sudden attack and kept that rebellion free with sabotage and ambushes against the forces trying to suppress them. His preference for lightning-fast attacks was spread to his Raven Guard Legion.
• Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: Known for his snow-white skin and dark hair.
• Extremity Extremist: Corax one-upped the usual version of this trope and bladed the feathery wings attached to his jetpack to lethal effect.
• Guns Akimbo: Wielded two archaeotech pistols prior to the Dropsite Massacre. Also qualifies as a pair of hand cannons, as they are stronger than a Heavy Bolter and can easily punch through Space Marine armor.
• In Touch with His Feminine Side: Corax was raised by his foster older sister and several maternal figures. No surprise he became quite moody, quiet and sensitive.
• Jerkass Has a Point: He nearly came to blows with Horus, who Corax considered overly-boastful and manipulative, and ultimately removed his legion from the Warmaster's command. Not the best behavior for a Primarch, but it turns out he was spot-on about Horus' character.
• Meaningful Name: "Corvus Corax" is the scientific name of the common raven.
• My God, What Have I Done?: He was horrified by the results of his attempt to speed up the Astartes creation process, and spent a year and a day in self-imposed seclusion after killing the monsters he'd created.
• My Greatest Failure: Witnessing and having to put down the horrific abominations that resulted from his attempts to expedite recruitment after the Drop Site Massacre nearly wiped out his Legion nearly broke him. Turns out it wasn't his fault, Alpha Legion infiltrators corrupted the gene-samples he used in that effort.
• One-Winged Angel: He is revealed to have accomplished this after journeying into the Eye of Terror. He unleashed his full psychic potential in the Warp and transformed into a raven-shaped being of sapient darkness. As a being of pure shadowy Warp energy (though he can assume his material form at will) he completely decimates an entire company of Word Bearers before utterly crushing the now-daemonic Lorgar one on one. The Daemon Primarch and his sons wind up fleeing the planet. He has spent his time since hampering the Traitor Legions from the shadows and freeing their slaves whenever possible.
• Perception Filter: He hid this ability even from his own legion, but Corax had a psychic talent for removing himself from living creatures' consciousness. This ability could occasionally work on automated sensors, as he demonstrated in one meeting with the Night Lords. The Captain of the Night Lords was clearly disturbed that not only had he failed to detect Corax before he revealed himself, but his helmet's sensors didn't register Corax even while he was looking directly at him.
• The Quiet One: Only to be expected after a youth spent hiding from guards while training and preparing for rebellion.
• Rebel Leader: His role on Lycaeus.
• Transhuman Abomination: After the Horus Heresy, Corax entered the Eye of Terror alone to hunt down Lorgar for revenge. There, his innate psychic powers allowed him to shed his human form entirely and become a being akin to a daemon under his own power. His new form let him easily overpower the now daemonic Lorgar, who now remains in his tower at least partially to avoid Corax's wrath. Corax now exists as a sentient dark presence, forever hunting down the Traitor Legions and freeing slaves throughout the Warp.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Inverted, actually. The Gate 42 incident cost the Raven Guard thousands of Astartes (leaving them the smallest of the Legions) in what Corvus deemed an utterly foolish plan that only worked at all because he managed to rally his men at a critical moment. However, he had sent the companies with the most Terran-born Raven Guards in first, as they were most likely to play along with Horus's plan. Most of these Astartes were also the ones who had been inducted into the warrior lodges, and thus most likely to be subverted by Horus. As a result, Corvus accidentally purged his Legion of those least-loyal to him and spared the Raven Guard a lot of infighting.
• Weaponized Exhaust: Corax was known to use his jetpack's exhaust this way.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Although the Imperium was already using child soldiers by turning teens into Space Marines, Corvus went even further after his Legion was nearly wiped out and he had to rebuild it rapidly to stall Horus' alliance. Claiming genetic samples from the Emperor's work on the Primarchs, Corvus didn't hesitate to use pre-teen boys as guinea pigs and turn them into full-fledged Space Marines with improved geneseeds.
• Wolverine Claws: Along with his whip, Corax wielded a pair of artificer-quality lightning claws called the Raven's Talons.

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