Board Thread:Warhammer 40k General Discussion/@comment-5.65.81.205-20131002091720/@comment-6078851-20131114010438

he was engineering humans long before the primarchs, and while he ultimately disposed of the thunder warriors it set the mould for his future plans. he also created the custodies before the primarchs and it may have been more advantageous to create more of them and have them wage his crusade. yeah, without the primarchs there would be no astartes but i think emps would still have created other astartes-like supersoldiers. i'm just hypothesizing that without primarchs the gods would never have had such potent levers with which to alter the balance of power.