Board Thread:Warhammer 40k General Discussion/@comment-69.143.134.163-20150419161351/@comment-45031393-20200211053856

Just a few points that occurred to me after reading this thread; sorry if it's inappropriate to resurrect a zombie thread.

1. Men have both the X & the Y chromosomes; it is the sperm that determines a child's sex IRL. So, I don't think female primarcs are an impossibility. However, it appears that the 20 are multiple times referenced as sons and/or brothers, so I don't buy any female primarch theories.

2. While the specific phrasing "The forgotten & the purged" could imply that these are separate punishments inflicted on the chapters, I'm not totally convinced. To be purged could simply mean to be purged from record; the phrasing could simply be for emphasis. While the "warnings," or specific failures of these two chapters are noted to be separate, the methods of their punishment may be entirely identical.

3. We can assume that if the "warnings" went unheeded, that the failures of these chapters were later repeated. This seems to lend weight to theories surrounding chaos corruption and/or genetic infirmity.

4. While the treachery of Horus and the Traitor Legions was not hidden, the scale of the HH may have made it too difficult to conceal. The hypothetical corruption of the lost legions would have happened first, and it is entirely possible that it was wiped from the record simply because it was possible to do so. It is also potentially a strategy that was considered a failure, or perhaps even unecessary or inefficient, by the time of the HH.

5. Since both chapters are now known to have participated in the Randgan Xenocides, and entire legions (plural!) are known to have been lost in that conflict, the simplest answer seems to be that both legions were either eliminated or met with disgrace during the campaign. I do note that the subsequent "bio pogroms," ultimately conducted in part by the Space Wolves, "left entire human inhabited sectors lifeless." Since the Iron Warriors are rumored to have been ground down through campaigns that resulted in a lot of collateral damage, this may have happened to one or both of the forgotten legions if they too participated in the slaughter.

My own theory is that one or both chapters were lost during the xenos incursion itself, whether by death, degeneracy, or corruption (or some combination) who knows. I'd like to think that the second chapter actually survived the initial onslaught and either objected to or was corrupted in part by the pogroms, rebelled and was put down by the Space Wolves.