Primarch Garden
Easter Morning
Thanks to @felicyta-of-rivia for the suggestion! The Seedlings celebrate the ancient tradition of East-tor.
They didn't eat the "rabbit."
May i request my version of the 2nd Primarch Tyrannus and his husband aldric? Don't mind me i just love you art it's wonderful!
THESE TWO ARE VERY CUTE I ENJOYED DRAWING THEM!!! Also I took some liberties with some body piercings, assuming that they might have them considering the quantity of piercings on their face! I hope you don’t mind or at least they’re in character.
I keep working on my design for the 2nd primarch and for a while I couldn’t understand what about it looked so off to me, so I sat down and really analyzed the other primarchs armor and had the obvious but shocking realization of:
Primarchs have distinctly stylized armor.
And that’s what was throwing me off about my original designs is that I was basically just drawing regular space marine armor. So now the only problem is actually stylizing the damn armor 😭
so in the lore for the Hammers of Osterhagen, I've written down that they venerate "On the Great Skarosian Xenocide and the Emperor's Folly", written by "II" (obviously the Second Primarch), as some kind of holy text/operational manual, and that's why they do the whole "nomad-predation fleet" thing and steal everyone's taranium and generally just kind of aren't fun to be around, because that's what II wrote is what you have to do to fight the Daleks
but they're also not II Legion descendants, like that's something I'm being very clear on, they're probably actually Ultramarines, maybe with a bit of Dark Angels as their very Dreadwing-y heraldry suggests, and if they aren't, they're Death Guard, maybe World Eaters (the other Legions not the II involved in the aforementioned xenocide)
Ailani, The Lost Primarch of the Second Legion and Mother of the Imperial Hospitallers
In the annals of Imperial History, there stand heroes greater than any other. These are the Primarchs, the Sons of the Emperor of Mankind, the patriarchs of the Twenty Legions of the Adeptus Astartes who united a frayed and divided galaxy in a long ago age when people still looked to the stars with hope... and the events of the Horus Heresy had not yet doomed the galaxy to darkness, suffering, and despair. But of these, only Eighteen are remembered: The Nine who Turned Traitor, and The Nine Who Remained, steadfast and loyal. Here then is a tale, a tale of the Second Primarch, lost to history and imperial records. It is the tale of Ailani, the Beloved Second, and the Emperor’s Daughter.
Ailani was not like her brothers from the beginning. Beyond the fact that she’d never felt right in her own skin as a child, she had always been a gentle soul.
Cast by warp storms far across the galaxy shortly after her creation, the child then known as “Amanaki” was deposited upon Takiko, an oceanic world dotted with long chains of verdant and mountainous tropical islands, whose vast sea teemed with life on a scale unimaginable. There, the boy was discovered by a young couple, newly married but unable to bear children of their own. Seeing the child from the heavens as a miracle, they adopted the strong lad, who immediately demonstrated a way with resolving disputes and mending broken things, but never seemed quite comfortable with himself. In time, the boy came to understand that “Amanaki” was not their real name, merely one they had been given by a barely remembered man, the memories lost in shadow and fog, and there was a deeper reason to his unease with his own reflection. Amanaki was encouraged by his parents to cast off the trappings of outward appearances, and embrace his true self — fixing what was broken and settling conflict out in the world was all well and good, but until the inner conflict was resolved and the sense of identity rectified, “Amanaki” would never rise to their full potential. After much soul-searching, reflection, and meditation, Amanaki vanished beneath the expert and caring hands of one of Takiko’s finest healers. Flesh was reshaped, bones restructured, and the boy who’d landed on that world years ago ceased to be, and it was the young woman named Ailani who rose like a phoenix from the metaphorical ashes.
There was awkwardness, at first, but Ailani’s metabolic and psychological gifts as a Primarch made the transition surprisingly natural, if not exactly “easy”, though she did not understand the reasons at the time. Finally herself, Ailani was inspired by the memory of the Healer who helped complete her, and became a healing woman of great repute — indeed, there was none finer on Takiko. Her reputation spread as the woman whose physical labor could heal the body, and her spiritual labor could mend the soul. In addition, her proficiency at conflict mediation only grew with her confidence, and she never lost her love of building and repairing things; it brought her nearly unrivaled joy to see her work bring life and happiness to those around her. In time, she came to be known as “The Saint of Takiko”, the legendary figure who brought peace to the world and united it without ever firing a shot. Unfortunately for Ailani and Takiko, this reputation helped attract the attention of the Emperor of Mankind.
When the Emperor came to Takiko looking for his Warp-Scattered Son, he had not found the man born to lead the Second Legion, but rather he found Ailani, a being worthy only of the Emperor's Scorn, born from Amanaki’s sullied and ruined flesh as the Primarch had embraced her true identity. Ailani did not answer to the name the Emperor called her by. She had not answered to that name since she was a child. When the Emperor cast blame for the "abomination of a Primarch" upon the kindly old man and woman who had been Ailani's parents and lashed out, Ailani met her "father" in battle. He was not prepared for her fury, and while he ultimately emerged victorious, his "daughter", though not a trained warrior like her kin who had been discovered thus far, still managed to have him on the back foot more frequently than he would ever admit. Indeed, the Emperor considered, the wayward Primarch of the Second Legion might actually be worth salvaging. Ailani begrudgingly agreed to return to Terra with the Emperor, but only if he left her family and people alone, a condition the Emperor demurringly agreed to.
Ailani was not a Primarch of a particularly military mind, especially at first, though she brought with her the warrior traditions of her people. First and foremost, she was a healer. With her hands, she mended wounds and repaired cities. With her voice, she mended whole peoples and ended conflicts. When she assumed command of the Second Legion, until then known as the Skybreakers, she was disappointed. There had been no effort to inculcate in them values of construction or nation building. They were a purely destructive force, one who prided themselves on being able to shatter the fighting force of entire worlds with utmost speed and efficiency. Ailani had known war in her time. She understood well enough the value of combat. But, saddled as she was with a Legion who shared the exact opposite of her values, she resolved to teach her errant sons how to be the Builders of Worlds, a marching crusade that strove to create an Empire worth ruling. In time, the Second Legion took a new name, as the Skybreakers became the Imperial Hospitallers, and Ailani became their living standard: her billowing black and braided hair, ornate white and marigold armor with a golden Iwalani, a bird native to Takiko, in place of the Imperial Aquila, and piercing green eyes — stained completely through like emeralds from the omnipresent Ki'ihopna Algae that grew throughout the food on Takiko — causing her to stand out, even among her fellow Primarchs.
Ailani had inherited the Emperor's Optimism, his belief in a better tomorrow and a better mankind worthy of living in it. As her legion spread across the stars, the Hospitallers brought aid to the needy, healing to the sick and injured, and did their best to claim worlds with a mind to preserving or improving the standard of living before they left, but where her brother Lorgar Aurelian dallied as he attempted to spread his doctrine of the Imperial Divinity, Ailani moved quickly. In order to keep a consistent pace and accomplish all her objectives, Ailani divided her Legion into "Cohorts'' who would move in a staggered deployment. These cohorts were named in accordance with the seafaring and island-dwelling culture Ailani had come from: the Maka Ihe, the Vanguard Cohort, would take a world, and begin restructuring and rebuilding according to the rules of Imperial Compliance as well as Ailani’s own personal values. As the Vanguard Cohort transitioned to Worldbuilding, the troops would be able to rest, and were reclassified as "Pa’a", or "Stabilizers", and in turn, "Kūkulu ʻāina" — "Constructors" — as rehabilitation of the world entered its final stages. By the time a Vanguard Cohort had transitioned to Constructors, the Constructors of a previous world had emerged rested and ready for a new bout of combat, and would transition back to Vanguard status as they moved to a new world to continue the Great Crusade.
Ailani may not have been initially well received by her legion owing to her non-military bearing and her clashing values with the Skybreakers, but upon seeing her patience and care for every soul under her command, her Legion gradually became quite taken with her beauty, iron will, silken compassion, and her steadfast and unwavering loyalty to her legion and the worlds they had taken and rebuilt. It was said that she possessed the beauty of Fulgrim, Vulkan's compassion, the high-minded ideals of Sanguinius, Rogal Dorn’s command at construction, and Roboute Guilliman’s administrative prowess, even if she did not excel quite as much as her brothers in any of these individual qualities. Regardless of the degree of truth to this reputation, she made easy friends with several of her kin, most notably Horus, Sanguinius, Fulgrim, and Vulkan, and less easy but still strong friendships with Lorgar Aurelian, with whom Ailani deeply enjoyed discussing matters of philosophy, even if she found his religious zealotry more than a little grating, and Konrad Kurze and Angron, with the two tormented Primarchs able to take much comfort in her soothing presence and healing words. Perhaps then, Ailani was simply too good, too pure, for a growing and changing Imperium, as those qualities which made her among the best of the Primarchs increasingly brought her into ideological conflict with the Emperor.
Ailani had never held the best of opinions of her “father”, as for all his psychic charm and honeyed words that he carefully and deliberately loaded with the ideals she valued, she’d seen a glimpse of his true character when he’d first come to Takiko: an arrogant and egotistical megalomaniac, a man who was obsessed with being God but demanded his followers not call him that out of an enforced and self-serving modesty, and a man who made little effort to hide how much he despised her for “ruining his hard work” by embracing her true self and taking her own name. It was obvious to her that he only tolerated her “aberration” because she had too many useful talents and, as a Primarch, she would be too difficult to replace. While he had been true to his word and had not harmed her family or her people, he had left a garrison of the War Hounds, now known as the World Eaters, nearby to "protect” Takiko ever since he took her with him back to Terra. The implied threat had never been lost on the Primarch of the Second Legion, and deep down, her gentle heart boiled at the Emperor’s audacity, and this set the stage for her Legion’s disappearance.
While neither the fastest Legion nor the slowest, the Imperial Hospitallers had conquered hundreds of worlds, and built glittering gems of civilization as they passed. The Emperor should have been proud. Instead, he saw in Ailani’s planetary reconstructions and rehabilitations an act of defiance. Whether he saw rightly or not is both unremembered and unimportant, but it was certainly true that Ailani never truly believed in him or his cause, and resented him for holding her world hostage to ensure her continued compliance. Her protests, however, had fallen among deaf ears among the Primarchs, with the sole exception of the Eleventh — ironic as the two sisters had seldom seen particularly eye to eye on much of anything. For all her siblings’ best qualities, too few of them shared in her grievances, and those who did were either unable or unwilling to help her do anything about it. As her quiet resentment of the Emperor simmered, her growing unwillingness to see Takiko continued to be held hostage any longer sparked a notion in her that she knew could split the fledgling Imperium in two: Takiko would secede from the Imperium, and with the might and expertise of the Imperial Hospitallers, it just might manage it.
Outwardly, the Hospitallers continued with their role in the Great Crusade, but their pace began to slow as Ailani started recalling veteran soldiers off the lines and put much greater emphasis on letting younger, less experienced Marines carry the Legion’s role. This roughly coincided with the Eleventh Legion doing the same, with the two Legions gradually building up an elite fighting force of their most capable soldiers, ready for the order to be given. For Ailani, these veterans were chosen with preferential favor given to survivors from the Legion’s days as the Skybreakers — these old soldiers carried skills and experience she would need if her plan to save her homeworld from the Emperor’s callousness and ego was to succeed.
Some unknown period of time before the Horus Heresy, the moment came, and the order was given. The Saint of Takiko returned to her homeworld, and made a decision she could never undo: she ordered the Imperial Hospitallers to fire upon the World Eaters garrison. Veteran blitzkrieg warriors from the old Skybreakers legion formed a spearhead that cut through the World Eaters ranks with ease, using their skills and capitalizing on the confusion to force the World Eaters to retreat through the Warp. The time Ailani had won would only be a few weeks before the Imperium heard what she’d done. Perhaps it would be another few weeks before the inevitable retaliation arrived. Her time was short, and so was Takiko’s. She, and her people, needed to be elsewhere when the hammer dropped, not an easy task with the ships available. As she bade her people to take only what was necessary as she evacuated the planet, word arrived from the Eleventh Legion: they had failed in their course to affect the same strategem. A small delay had snowballed into a far greater failure, and the Eleventh had lost all that she’d cherished at the hands of the Space Wolves Legion. While Ailani’s heart wept for her Sister’s incredible loss, she was gladdened by her arrival with what remained of her Legion at Takiko.
With the newly arrived ships, she had all that she needed to save her people, and for his part, the Eleventh Primarch was glad to assist as it gave a silver lining to his own failure. Millions of civilians boarded Second Legion ships that were too on edge, and Eleventh Legion ships that were too empty. By the time the Imperial response came, with a furious Emperor sending the Night Lords and the World Eaters to make an example of the two rebellious Legions, Takiko was empty, and the Legions were long gone. In a petty rage, the Emperor had the World Eaters and Night Lords glass the world, before the Emperor himself used his psychic powers to cast Takiko’s twin moons at the planet’s surface, pulverizing it into mere rubble. The Emperor's rage was perhaps not entirely misunderstandable; after all, never before had a Primarch disobeyed him. Never before had a Primarch rebelled against his authority. Little did he know, though this was the first time, it would not be the last, and the worst was soon to come for him and his fledgling Imperium.
The Imperial Records would be wiped immediately after. The statues of the Two Rebellious Primarchs were removed from their plinths on Terra. The Emperor, in his rage, psychically wiped all knowledge of the Second and Eleventh Legions and their Primarchs. Even the other Primarchs were forced to forget, but there was no covering up the hole made by Ailani’s absence; without her to discourage Lorgar Aurelian’s zealotry, he became more vulnerable to Erebus’ manipulations and the psychological predations of the Ruinous Powers. Without her soothing presence and calming words, Angron and Kurze began to grow less stable. Without the Saint of Takiko, the Imperium may have lost its last, best chance at avoiding the Horus Heresy only a few years later.
As for Ailani and her legion, their status is completely unknown. Few can even infer that a Second Legion once existed, and fewer still know anything of it beyond that, so complete was the Emperor’s purge of the records and the Imperium’s post-heresy suppression of reason and critical thought. But, even in the grim and the dark of the 42nd millennium, from worlds where all hope seemed lost in the face of certain doom, reports occasionally arrive at the Inquisition... reports detailing the arrival of unidentified Space Marines clad in archaic white and marigold armor, and bearing an unusual standard and livery not documented anywhere. These marines vanish as quickly as they arrive, saving the people and then departing on courses unknown.
Perhaps, just perhaps, Lady Ailani is not quite finished with her Crusade just yet.
A look at Attali’s views regarding her siblings. From fragmentary comments.
1. The Lion:
“A difficult man. He seems to need to be hated. I am reminded of an ancient Terran phrase, ‘a beast I am, lest a beast I become.’ When one spends his life hunting monsters...”
3. Fulgrim:
“.... My sweet brother Aenon says that he sees good in Fulgrim. I see a lovely mask, but nothing lurks behind it.”
4. Perturarbo:
“He could be reached. If only he had time to listen. I see a frightened boy in the body of an angry man. And yet he has shown me nothing but respect. Perhaps I remind him of his sister on Olympia.”
5. The Khan:
“His gift for strategy is exceeded in my estimation by the sound of his laugh. He promises one day he will teach me to ride in Chogorian style.”
6. The Russ:
“He found me. Drank from my cup. Dueled like a warrior - did not expect any less from me. Rare is the man I admire more than Leman Russ. And yet I pity the burden he must bare.”
7. Rogal Dorn:
“We have had many a pleasant correspondence on the subject of architecture. Here is a man to make cathedrals sing.”
8. Konrad Curze:
“When first we met, he clutched my hand and wept.”
9. Sanguinius:
“He has never a sign of the discomfort caused by the curse I carry. Even the Russ apologized for his occasional withdrawals. An Angel among men.”
10. Ferrus Manus:
“A sad, strange, arrogant man.”
11. The Blind King:
“My sweet brother, who is always attentive. Never patronizing. When we first met I knocked him unconscious in a sparring match. Then, he returned the favor. He calls me ‘Little Sister’ in that brogue of his. I tolerate it, for it is both a joke and a term of endearment. He stands a few inches shorter than I do. I’d never tolerate such commentary from anyone else, save perhaps Sanguinius, who would never dare, and Vulkan who is, quite literally, far taller than I.”
12. Angron:
“There is no honor in self-destructive abandon. But there is pity. I make him intensely uncomfortable. The feeling is mutual, but not borne of hate.”
13. Roboute Guilliman:
“The first I met after the Russ. I shall always recall that he showed no hint of surprise at my gender, but instead complimented me on the history of my campaigns on Aix, as if we had known each other all along and were merely at that point in the conversation. I regret that I rarely serve with my brothers, but he is one whose company I miss more than most.”
14. Mortarion the Reaper:
“To be quite clear, Mortarion is visibly affected by my condition. Even his pallor cannot hide this. He is a fascinating man, in my estimation. Magnus dislikes him but concedes he may well be the most intelligent of us.”
15. Magnus the Red:
“He is almost as powerful as Father, but still comparatively young and reckless. Father told me once that the two used to speak to each other in dreams before they were reunited. I have resolved to ask Magnus about this one day.
I suspect he is among Father’s favorites. We have a very interesting relationship, I think. We share a love of books and learning. We exchange our discoveries. He is of course affected by my condition and that of my sons, but he bares it manfully. When first we met, he assigned one of his sons without his gift as an equerry. Happily the young man understood Hand Sign and was keen to learn that of my own Legion. Sadly, that young man has now been interred. Magnus mourned him. He is a complex man, but I have a warm spot for him.”
16. Horus
“Aenon and Russ dislike him. I myself ignore the things about him that bother the others: I have no interest in politics, and I believe that makes things easier between us.”
17. Lorgar Aurelian
“I was there when they found him, you know. He recognized me for who I was, though Father made no introduction. His world and my own are quite similar, except that in its darkest hour his world, however briefly, embraced the darkness, while mine refused it. They are a strange people. I believe Lorgar knows his scripture. I do not believe he comprehends it well. He is, in many ways, a neophyte priest. He could be trained, if only Father would allow it; Father knows his pain.”
18. Vulkan:
“My dear brother. Taller, wiser, more vocal than I. I have never met a more tolerant soul. Having grown up in a cloistered order, I cannot express just how meaningful such a quality may be.”
