yes ok I have been asked about the updated codex let’s talk updated codex
So. Post Plague-Wars. Ultramar system. Guilliman and Yvraine have a strong alliance, and in completely and totally unrelated news have a daughter named Juno Vaeyncaria Guilliman.
MEANWHILE…
on the other side of the Imperium, the Emperor is given a Text-To-Speech Device. Now the original ITEHATTSD obviously happens prior to Plague Wars so while the basic framework is there (kitten exists, magnus is back, dorn and his Boy are there, etc.) it’s obviously a lil different. Through a series of convoluted events we don’t need to discuss at this point, Magnus accidentally pokes the timeline in a weird way and pops the dead primarchs back into existence. They remember everything just fine! They are just. no longer dead. and now in 42k.
This brings us to what I’m affectionately calling ‘2012 Avengers Tower Imperial Palace.’ All the known primarchs are active, though some are still running around 'lost-ish' in the warp. Most of the previously dead primarchs are ‘recovering’ in their former residencies alongside the TTS crew, seeing to what’s left of their legion and figuring out what the hell is going on with. whatever is happening in M42.
Horus in particular is in a weird spot. first, of all the returnees, he’s alone. Ferrus makes up with fulgrim pretty immediately, sang is permanently covered in various marines of his geneline, konrad’s having a Great Time Actually (we’ll get to that later). but nobody seems to like horus much, a position he’s never been in, and this includes his legion which is entirely under abaddon’s control and not going anywhere in the near future. so he does what any guy going through a midlife crisis does and gets himself a hobby.
See, two supposedly dead primarchs remain unaccounted for after Magnus’ spell, namely the two original Lost Primarchs. by logic this means they must still be alive, somewhere. everyone else is unbothered by this, as Malcador’s memory spell disallows any concentrated thought of the two, and even though the primarchs are aware they had more brothers, to their knowledge dad went out to meet with them and something Went Wrong 🤷🏻♀️ and then he came back and retired shortly thereafter. weird! oh well.
but horus was not just killed, he was Unmade. when he was reconstituted it was as though he was new, without the stain of chaos.
and free of malcador’s influence.
while ostensibly crashing on dad’s couch, Horus throws himself into finding out what he believes is the key to all of this, the thing that poisoned the imperium before even the Heresy, the original Deviation from the Plan: whatever actually happened to the two lost primarchs?
Ok it’s later now. Konrad Curze always believed in fate. He followed it dutifully into its darkest depths, to his own grisly death.
And then he came back! He never saw anything about that! He figures that, having lived out his fate to its completion, he’s now free of it entirely. Oh he still has visions, but he’s much more lax in interpreting them, and thinks himself above their dictates besides. So. He still likes flensing people and thinks fear makes a fine method of control and hes still got…issues…but he’s not quite as stuck and he's having a wonderful time about it. and he’s also hanging around the palace bc he’s also got very little contact with his legion, which is either scattered or under Sevatar and/or whichever NL prophet we're on now.
So he gets roped into fucking around in emps’ restricted history section with horus! yippee!
The two actually work really well as a buddy-cop kinda pair, with horus slowly repairing his relationships where he can while konrad trails him and learns how to be alive outside of the narrow scope of his futuresight. Magnus inevitably sticks his nose into things and gets to work undoing the mind-block on the rest of them. Alpharius gets involved because it turns out one of the lost legions might actually still exist. and even lion and leman join the hunt cause honestly they're really curious at this point.
Eventually the uncles drag their niece and her friends into the whole ordeal, in part because she happens to have a particularly strong psychic presence that attracts lost and dead marine souls in the warp. Like a cooler, named character version of the Legion of the Damned. Usefull when trying to gain accurate historical info.
oh yeah and emps gets off the throne at some point. he’s not bothering with the Mystery Gang because he’s too busy being one half of a political deadlock with guilliman, where it’s very clear gman does not actually trust him to lead the imperium anymore and is essentially running his own show off-leash from ultramar, but neither of them are remotely willing to like, discuss this. in any way. so instead they’re just stuck awkwardly across from each other, guilliman never offering control of the imperium back to his father and emps never reaching to take the regent position from him and i think if he stopped to think about it this is bc emps would be. a little nervous about resuming full command back from guilliman. because he’s not sure guilliman would give it to him. and he’s not sure he’s in a position to handle that. again. but emps is allergic to being emotionally competent so his brain skates over that thought, unable to confront it directly with any introspection, and instead he just. doesnt mention it! and guilliman doesnt mention it and emps sits in the wreckage of the dream he accidentally set on fire himself while his son methodically does the work to put it out and they won’t look at each other and its fine its all. fine.
and that’s the Updated Codex! 👍🏻 feel free to ask more
thanks to @wolf_feathers12 for the chance to give my ted talk, and tagging @thisuserissilly for lore posts (tm)
@cardinalcanis YES HELLO THANK U strap in, ur getting both of them (they are a Pair, Not Sold Separately, Etc.)
Their names are Mercurius and Medea, and they're based on famous mothers! and i am putting this under a readmore for your own protection sorry in advance
We'll start with Medea since he's a straightforward adaptation of Euripides Emps probably should have seen coming. For those unfamiliar with one of my favorite plays, Medea is the wife of Jason of Argonaut fame, and they have two children. After Medea does a bunch of stuff for him (like helping him with that pesky golden fleece business) Jason leaves her to marry a princess, stating that the boys will have a better life if they come with him to be named his heirs, that Medea's wedding vows don't count as she is a foreigner, and also by the way she's being chased out of the city. Medea is so insulted, disrespected, and left without recourse she, even with the entire ensemble cast of the play attempting to talk her out of it, murders Jason's new princess and then also her own sons. She kills the boys with her own hands and then refuses to let Jason see the bodies, stating that, seeing as how Jason is so preoccupied with heirs and having a legacy, this was the only way she could hurt him in kind. It's an act she knows is terrible and she herself wrestles with her love for the children as she makes her decision, but the fact that, as a woman, she has no way of truly harming Jason's reputation in the way he's harmed her drives her to it. What makes Medea interesting to me, personally, is that, while unquestionably condemned by every mortal present on stage including herself, the boys' murder is framed as justified by the gods, because she gets to ride off in a golden chariot at the end of the play. Olympian gods play eye-for-an-eye rules and Medea has dealt herself in.
anyway. I'm sure you understand where this is going. Medea the primarch is one of the boys who does Not appreciate getting dragged into this Imperium of Man mess, but he is not one who hates his sons. He asks for certain concessions, largely regarding the rearing of his legion and cultural practices on compliance worlds, which are initially granted. The legion is perhaps literally the Emperor's Finest. They are efficient combatants but pride themselves largely on politics. Medea leaves marines on worlds he conquers, and they integrate into the populous as vaunted heroes and benevolent guardians, solidifying the compliance into permanency. Many of the higher-ranking marines are known by name by serfs and citizens, appearing as individuals in pop cultural creations and imperial propaganda alike, and many of those left on world have families and extensive communal networks. Medea's legion quickly receives new recruits to fill the absences after every compliance. His is a stable geneseed, and his rate of compliance never falters. Eventually, his is unquestionably the largest legion, rivaling even the eventual height of the Ultramarines, though it never appears this way because most of the vets are scattered, happily guarding their new home planets. Except to one who is paying attention to all the numbers. The Emperor orders Medea's legion to rendezvous with him. The entire legion. Any stationed marines are to take leave of their posts and return to Medea's command, just...for the time being. Ostensibly this is for a moment of recognition, a ceremony of honor to commemorate their incredible service. So incredible a service, it involves, in part, the Emperor joining them to personally direct the next leg of their crusade.
Realizing the emperor intends to command over him, use his precision tool as a sledgehammer, and otherwise does not intend to uphold the concessions initially granted to the legion in the process, Medea is left backed into a corner. Feeling as though something terrible will happen if he does not comply, he summons his scattered marines, and the massive fleet makes the trek to the rendezvous planet. The Emperor boards the flagship and finds the entire legion carefully, methodically executed, any geneseed and trainee of any level destroyed, and Medea alone, having single-handedly dismantled the pride of the Imperium over the course of the trip. Even if they spun it as an incident of primarch-gone-crazy, the total loss of what are essentially the early Imperium's posterboys is a bad look for Emps. Worse, he hesitates to destroy Medea and the primarch gets away, slipping into the warp. It's an embarrassment, and one best forgotten. Many of Medea's planets have to be re-conquered, as even with their minds wiped they fracture from the Imperium without the guidance of their beloved marines; not even the nicest legions seems to be able to fit themselves into the gaps Medea's veterans have left behind, to say nothing of those that draw unlucky and are met with unforgiving new overlords.
So. Mercurius is based on Hermione, from The Winter's Tale not [redacted], who's name is taken from Hermes/Mercury. Hermione is a queen whose jealous husband accuses her of infidelity, causing the death of her eldest son, the abandonment of her new (supposedly bastard) daughter, and her own death by broken heart. Despite all the drama, The Winter's Tale is, technically speaking, a comedy, (it's the one with the 'Exit. Pursued by bear' stage direction), and at the end of the story it's revealed that Hermione is not dead, but has been living in seclusion nearby, which she exits when the remorseful king has found and accepted his rejected daughter as his own.
Mercurius is a jovial fellow who likes to give gifts and make jokes. He grew up on a planet that had. well. absolutely nothing wrong with it actually. It's fine. He lived in a city called New^2 York and had access to the internet and regular therapy sessions. His mom sends him birthday cakes every year. Every conversation with his brothers feels like the 'that's rough buddy' exchange, but he's got a dual degree in liberal arts and psych so he generally makes it out ok. His geneseed isn't UNstable, but there's certainly something weird about it. Nobody can quite figure out what it is though, so they leave it alone; it certainly isn't smarts. His marines aren't exactly the sharpest crayons in the box. Instead, they mostly find work as communicators and messengers, running between legions.
Mercurius and Medea were close confidants, paired in an attempt to facilitate better standards in Mercurius' marines via proximity with Medea's perfect darlings, and when Medea's thing goes down, Mercurius has a hard time of it. He slept through his alarm that day and walks into the confrontation between E and Medea like
and is distracting enough that Medea gets out. He is accused of having known about Medea's intentions beforehand, though he insists if he had known he would have stopped his brother (true). Still seething, the emperor doesn't believe him and orders him stripped of his title. Mercurius' legions are separated and disseminated among the others, largely the Ultramarines, while his own presence is redacted from the records and memories of all in the imperium. Mercurius is sent out with a small remainder of his faction in a kind of deathwatch penance and, according to records destroyed as soon as Emps memorized their contents, he died during a warp-related incident, before the heresy.
My Totally 100% Ultramarine Successor Chapter They're Totally Blueberries I Promise, the Imperial Lares, have a high concentration of Merc's geneseed in circulation (they are not aware of this). They're terribly lucky, have mostly spent their time as a chapter chilling in a suspiciously quiet part of Ultima sector, and are generally just kind of. well. my friend started calling them The Emperor's Silliest for a reason. That's a whole nother discussion though please ask me about the Lares.
anyway that is the very long serious narrative version. Real talk, mercurius and medea are the comedy/tragedy twins. like in a narrative, genre-defining sense.
Medea, as Tragedy, basically cursed the imperium in its entirety but also mostly his dad, and is probably some kind of chaos god in his own right at this point. probably absolutely responsible for whatever kind of luck the lamenters have going on.
Mercurius is the fridged mom, the Comedy that's only allowed to shine because the Tragedy goes Too Far. he’s still not a great fighter, but he is good at saying what a down-on-his-luck space marine needs to hear. He appears as a blackshield deathwatch marine and is a sort of saint figure; things just end up ok if he’s around, in a kind of indirect way. Your reinforcements will make it on time. The cultist trips on a rock trying to shoot you. The guardsmen you’re camping with share their seasoned meat. things that are too small to be properly documented. nobody really knows where a lone blackshield marine goes when their missions are over. Nobody asks.
further notes:
-A lot of people think Medea is using warp equivalent jedi mind tricks to do the compliances the way he does. while he is most certainly a wytch, his strange ability to waltz into a place and declare imperial law without getting shot to hell is actually largely due to a quirk of his geneseed that involves the production of specific human-affecting pheremones. Whatever the opposite of transhuman dread is, that's what Medea's legion has. This is a part of why he leaves a few on every planet, and why those planets fall back into chaos so quickly after they leave
-Medea's legion was so good at peaceful compliance the marines had a culture of being proud of de-escalation, often boasted about limited combative deployments, and it was considered a status symbol to keep 'virgin' weapons - bolters that had never been fired, swords that had never seen blood, etc. They can definitely fight, don't misunderstand, they just pride themselves on not having to.
-Medea's thing going down the way it does provides the overarching plot for Juno's story; her returned uncles (largely Horus and Konrad) are now free of the spell that forces their minds not to think about their lost brothers and they immediately start digging. From their perspective, something just Went Wrong out there and Merc and Medea were never heard from again and dad immediately came home and handed off the reigns so he could retire. hello.
-like merc, medea is never directly responsible for any misfortune suffered by his proximity, it's mostly an aoe on such a narrative scale it usually can't be traced back directly to him, but he's also tucked a lot deeper into the warp than merc is and way more fucked up about things so. he probably could be directly responsible for things. if he wanted to be.
-medea and merc's situation is part of why horus is made warmaster (as opposed to emps continuing to handle things himself as a commander). He figured at least having the appearance of giving the boys autonomy would be better received.
-the psykic backlash from medea's sons' murder is responsible for an amount of warp entities, many of which go on to attach themselves to word bearers (it's very important to me that medea is not the cause of the heresy, because imperialistically inclined nation imploding badly under it's own weight is perfectly satisfying as is, but he's certainly not Not involved. the wb would have found other daemons to pact with but there is something about a selection of them being basically they're cousins. not that any of them are aware of this of course)
-merc is fully blind due to an accident during the scattering (the amount of ‘never saw it coming’ jokes is. not few.)
-merc is the one who taught tarik the bear joke.
-merc's faceclaim is Jared Padaleki but SPECIFICALLY season 1 sam winchester. bc that's exactly the vibe i want from him. ur estranged brother shows up and tells you u have to drop everything and jump in his junker of a car to go fight demons and ghosts and shit with shotguns full of salt and he's like we have to do this. we have to go live out of motels and stab people in alleys. to save the world. and ur like. dude i'm trying to get a 4 year degree. from like. college. like in real life. ????
-merc looks kind of intimidating in blackshield armor bc. well. it’s deathwatch blackshield armor. and he’s small for a primarch but that’s not saying a lot. and then he takes the helmet off and it’s like oh! friendly :))
-i think originally merc's deathwatch mission was to find and kill medea himself, but he decided he wasn't really feeling it tripped through a warp portal and got a little distracted. He wasn't lying, he would have tried to talk medea out of killing his own kids, but he isn't exactly a loyalist either. I think now he'd like to go find his brother and bring him back around, but again, he's not particularly competent and he keeps ending up involved in Various B-Plot Shenanigans so. that might take a bit.
-if they had ever fought, medea would not have killed mercurius. Like he wouldn’t have tried i mean. I’m not sure you can kill merc at all tbh, my man’s basically a loony toon, but i digress. medea held no ill will towards anyone except emps when he did his murder spree, and he definitely has no interest in trying to kill merc.
-following that: medea left all of the mortals (techpriests, serfs, guardsmen, etc.) alone when he killed his legion. His personal remembrancer actually followed him into the warp when he escaped, which is how there's unfinished art and shit of the event floating around on abandoned ghost ships for juno and pals to discover later
-are the Lares lucky because they're merc's, or because medea's grimdark shroud avoids them out of courtesy to his brother? who knows.
-ahriman is going to finally get into the good part of the black library and he's going to find merc reading calvin and hobbes strips with his feet on the coffee table and he's going to be so upset about it. (cegorach does get a kick out of the two of them, medea for giving emps what he deserved (he might have been involved with helping medea disappear after the incident, now that i think about it) and merc for just kind of existing as he is. merc thinks cegorach is a little mean, but because merc's kindness doesn't come from a place of pride, he generally isn't the target of whatever cegorach is pulling)
-recognizing either entity will drive the viewer insane because the spell (which is not a memory wipe per say, it's more like a blocker that won't let you linger on it, even if you are directly presented with knowledge of them) will try to erase the knowledge as fast as it appears. this is why neither of them have made a true reappearance. other than the fact that medea is sulking harder than anyone has sulked before, and merc is in Genre Containment for Plot Reasons.
-juno would not go insane if she saw either of them bc the spell malcador cast did not account for xenos primarch hybrids, so she’s fine, actually.
if u made it down this far ty!! hope u enjoy my guys, feel free to ask more about them. or juno's verse in general. I Just Think They're Neat etc. also if anything contradicts canon directly somewhere. it's my canon now it's literally fine. james workshop said so himself.
The Death of the Neophytes
by [REDACTED], Remembrancer of the XI
Recovered by [REDACTED], [REDACTED], and Juno Guilliman, from the lost ship [REDACTED]
Hi this is one of my lost primarchs. His name is Medea and you'll never guess what happens to his kids :)
Clean/Details
ref: Medea About to Kill Her Children (Medée furieuse), oil on canvas by Eugène Delacroix, 1838
What vibes do Medea and Mercurius homeworlds and legions have, like Roboute's being Rome and Mangnus's being Egyption
whoever u are i owe u my life for the opportunity to talk more merc and medea
medea’s is a mycenaean, psyker-heavy world of heroes and monsters. Medea himself is raised as a scion of a high house, famed for their potions, poisons, and bottled spells. He is well known on his planet and, while not in charge of anything per say, is viewed as a sort of powerful mythic figure prior to emps’ arrival, like he’s the witch who lives in the cave in the mountain it takes you ten days to climb so you can ask him for advice and he agrees to help but not before you complete a favor for him to prove your worth that is essentially another two week questline on its own. this reputation is in part because of medea’s geneseed quirk which allows him to produce pheromones that affect human brain chemistry, and in part because he’s got that psyker charm.
Mural of [REDACTED] sending a supplicant on a quest, artist unknown
Recovered from the Space Hulk Euripides by Juno Guilliman
his legion steps onto the planet for the first time and feels like they are home. Medea greets them as a parent with a favored child. They were called the Crysomallos and acted as honorguard for many important baseline imperials, but found favor with the local populous and were renamed the Astral Titans. While their pheromones can have various effects, the most typical use is a calming one that is often used to simply override the transhuman dread; very strong applications of the same compound may put even other astartes to sleep. the Astral Titans pride themselves on de-escalating conflicts and peaceful resolutions.
Merc’s world is perhaps my favorite because i gave myself permission to be completely stupid about it For The Story Themes. it’s a place very much like m3 earth. He lived in a big city called new^2 york and he’s got a four-year degree in psych with a minor in anthropology from the University of Delawont. He plays video games on his PS48ZXS (which Boy later inherits) and enjoys Broaderway theater shows. He was absolutely not important to his planet, besides being a medical oddity, like some kind of blind Robert Wadlow. While on the crusade he misses pizza and his adoptive mom sends him soctso birthday cakes every year while she can. She has to send multiple bc he shares with his boys.
Damaged pict, depicting a transhuman (unidentified) and a relative. Artist unknown.
Pulled with permission from the restricted section of His Most Holy Emperor's personal collection.
His lil guys were called something stupidly standard before, like ‘the messengers’ or something. They’re fine, but they’re just. kind of standard, nondescript marines. they don’t have any weird quirks and they don’t have that Collective Culture thing all the other legions seem to. theyre certainly nowhere near a big legion, but they’re not the littlest either. they’re just a bunch of guys who feel out of place. They're not even kept together as a legion per say; they act as messengers between legions specializing, if you can call it that, in carrying information back and forth across the expanding imperium and attempting to foster goodwill when the big boys have a joint encounter. and then merc shows up and he’s just a guy, and they realize that being just guys is their place. and their collective culture is being relieved at that instead of upset they’re not in a position better suited for glory seeking and emperor serving.
merc does not rename his legion, one of the captain’s remembrancer friends gives the guys a new nickname and it sticks. The Second’s Chorus, to everyone else’s principle actors. The fools that speak true, the ensemble that enhances both set and song, the extras that make the scene feel alive instead of empty.
(the Chorus who fail to talk medea out of her revenge, who witness all tragedies but can not change the course of the play.)
but also the Chorus who gives context. who remind you what has occurred in acts hours past. the audience’s touchstone for perspective. the ones who warn of the path and the ones who call sympathy for those who walk it.
