Warhammer 40K: The Emperor’s Primarch Project – Triumph or Tragedy?
The Emperor’s most significant project; a quest for twenty perfect beings, the Primarchs, to conquer the galaxy was doomed to fail – or did it?
The Primarch Project was part of the Emperor‘s plan to create an army of 20 Legions of super-human warriors, each led by a genetic sire known as a Primarch.
In a fortress-laboratory deep under Terra, long, long ago…
The Primarch Project Origins
The Emperor rose to power, fighting on Terra with genetically modified soldiers, the Thunder Warriors. But in the end, they proved hyper-violent and short-lived, and were culled by the Adeptus Custodes. His new Primarch project would be his greatest attempt to create generals to lead these warriors, second only to himself in skill, ability, and sheer power. It was begun in M29 with the aim to create 20 cloned ‘children’ of the Emperor. The facility to create these Primarchs was constructed on Terra and the Emperor alongside the Perpetual Erda and Biotechnical Division Director Amar Astarte oversaw the project, having the cohort grown in accelerated gene culturing chambers. His scientists watched over the growing fetuses in their chambers, afraid of what would happen if anything went wrong.
A troubled past and future awaited all twenty.
Project Success, and Disaster
According to Ingethel the Ascended, the Primarchs were created by the Emperor with the aid of forbidden sciences and arcane lore derived from the Warp. Eldrad Ulthran also states that the Emperor utilized dark powers to construct the Primarchs. It is speculated the Primarchs were imbued with energies and knowledge that the Emperor gained in a Warp Portal on the distant world of Molech. The Perpetual Erda was used as the “mother” of the Primarchs, combining her genetic material with that of the Emperor’s. However, the Gods of Chaos somehow managed to spirit them away from Terra just prior to their maturation with a great Warp vortex. It is further speculated that they also managed to tamper with the infant Primarchs during their journey through the warp.
The Perpetual Erda, the “mother” of the primarchs.
Competing Causes of Failure
The scattering of the Primarchs may have been the result of a Causal Loop created when Argel Tal and his men were sent back in time inside the Eye of Terror to the Emperor’s laboratory, as they were convinced by Ingethel the Ascended to destroy the Gellar Fields protecting the infants from the touch of the Chaos Gods. Almost immediately after the Gellar Field generators were disabled, the Primarchs were sucked into a Warp vortex. According to Erda, she was responsible for opening the vortex that scattered the Primarchs in order to save her children from the fate the Emperor intended. Several Primarchs including Konrad Curze, Roboute Guilliman, and even Sanguinius all came to believe that the scattering of the Primarchs and their upbringing on distant worlds had all been engineered by the Emperor.
From Nostramo to Barbarus, from Macragge to Medusa, the Primarch’s homeworlds were spread across the galaxy.
The Scattering of the Primarchs
Scattered across the galaxy, beyond the Emperor’s reach, all the Primarchs landed on different worlds vastly separated from their Father. The Emperor could sense that the infant Primarchs were alive, but was unable to reach them. Therefore he used their previously collected DNA samples to create the successors to the Thunder Warriors, the Space Marines. The genetic material of each one of the Primarchs was used to found a single Space Marine Legion, twenty in total. The new homeworlds of the infant Primarchs and subsequent experiences on those worlds would influence and mold them to a large extent. There each Primarch quickly grew to adulthood and often rose to power, ruling, leading, and helping the inhabitants. When the Emperor found them each in turn, he was generally pleased by their actions, and quickly gave them the leadership of their respective legion.
All twenty legions were crafted from the remnants of the missing Primarch’s genetic materials.
Lingering Doubts of the Primarch Project
Amar Astarte came to believe that the Primarch Project, and indeed the whole of the Legiones Astartes were doomed. The Primarchs were the key anchor to maintaining the genetic stability of the Space Marines, and upon their scattering, she saw the entire enterprise as a failure. This eventually led her to try to destroy the genetic knowledge behind their creation in the Palace Coup.
Learn More of the Primarchs
Lexicanum
~In the end the real question is – did the Emperor get exactly what he wanted from the Primarch Project?
