#wh40k 11th legion

[lucifer-s-understudy]

Space Marine: 11th Legion (artist unknown)

[lumi-klovstad-games]

Saorlaith Clannmorna, The Lost Primarch of the Eleventh Legion and Warrior Queen of the Black Eagles

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 Eleventh Primarch, lost to history and imperial records. It is the tale of Saorlaith Clannmorna, Queen and Matriarch of the Black Eagles Legion.

Saorlaith was always an outlier. As the sole deliberate attempt by the Emperor to craft a female Primarch, it is unclear what he’d hoped to achieve, or what role Saorlaith would have been intended to serve in had events played out their planned course.

Such plans, clearly, were not to be.

Scattered like her brothers by the furious winds of Chaos, Saorlaith was deposited by chance or destiny upon a misty and mountainous world. It was a primitive world not unlike the forgotten highlands of the ancient British Isles of Holy Terra, green with moss and heather, black with stone, and grey with numerous lakes that stretched like battle scars across its face. These endless highlands were called Dún na Badb, a name which carried beneath it the world’s dark and violent history.

Saorlaith was found by a local woman, Morna. Enigmatic and feared, Morna was a Queen of a great and remote land, as well as a respected and wise priestess of the Old Deer God and The Horned Huntress. Morna had powerful sorcerous gifts, and used her fell gifts to ferret out secrets from her rivals, deliver sickness and bad luck to her enemies, or heal her friends, and her wrath was swift and fatal if crossed, with powerful armies that crushed her opposition. Yet the imposing woman genuinely loved Saorlaith, and doted on her as a daughter. She inculcated in the young Primarch the ways of blood and sorcery, and the thrill of battle. Saorlaith grew up with many visitors paying homage to her mother or seeking her advice, but few for long term company, leading to a brilliant yet aloof and suspicious young woman who found difficulty connecting with others, especially as few if any ever sought to truly gain her friendship rather than attempt to leverage her position and title in some way. She was always "the Princess" or "the Heirress", and never simply "Saorlaith" to most. Despite her loneliness, or indeed perhaps because of it, she quickly learned the ways of a Warrior Princess, bonding well with her instructors, from whom she knew and understood the social equation and status quo. Never did they seek to use her connections, or use her to worm their way into her mother's favor; they were invested in her advancement and survival, and she was invested in the skills they had to teach her. Progressing quickly, eventually supplanted her mother at the head of her kingdom's vast armies by the age of 16, though Morna remained a close advisor to her daughter long even after she eventually abdicated the throne in Saorlaith’s favor. 

It is said that the day before Saorlaith assumed the throne, she heeded her mother's wisdom and traveled alone into the misty crags and moors to seek the blessing of the old gods and their court. She traveled unarmed and undressed, wearing just a simple and undecorated gown, a mark of humility before the great powers whose favors she hoped to win.

During her wandering, Saorlaith came across a great and vast lake she had not seen before. Taking a moment to rest, she was engaged by a mysterious man and woman. The man was dressed in furs and moss, and his hat was rimmed with the teeth of mighty predators and crested with antlers from a mighty deer. The woman was clad in leather and hides, and a hauberk of green mail. Saorlaith spoke for some time with the travelers, who claimed to be acquainted with Morna. Upon learning that Saorlaith was Morna's daughter and heir, the two became delighted, and engaged the young princess all day and night with conversation and games of riddles and clever wit. As morning came, the travelers thanked Saorlaith for her hospitality, and the woman waded into the waters, and drew from them a mighty shimmering spear, Géar-Anail, the White Breath, bestowing it upon the princess as a coronation gift fit only for the true heir of Queen Morna. As the travelers passed back into the mist, Saorlaith could not help but feel as though perhaps she'd known them when she was very young. Taking her prize back to her home, she was crowned by her mother, and took her place as Queen of her mountain realm and commander of her army.

Saorlaith became known as “The Unbreakable”, as her campaigns claimed triumph after triumph, and though her skills as a strategist and tactician were certainly fitting for her labors when required, her victories came more from her wild and savage charges, overwhelming her enemies in a stampede of relentless violence in simple pursuit of glory and the win, pure battle and conquest for its own sake. Saorlaith was a warrior at heart. A capable queen, yes, but her heart ever longed for greater battlefields beyond. She ached for new battles, new foes, and greater glories. It was not in her restless nature to simply sit on what she had already accomplished, for she knew in her bones that it would be in that way that her victory itself would be the one to finally defeat her.

Having conquered her own world, Saorlaith grew despondent that such incredible success would be the end of her. There were no further gains to make, no great foes to keep herself sharp against. While Saorlaith reconstructed her newly unified planet into a mighty and glittering kingdom where the druidic sorcerous ways of her ancestors ran like blood through the lowest levels, upholding everything, she began to fear that her greatest triumphs might be behind her. All that lay before her had been conquered and reshaped. The occasional rebellion offered no challenge, no real chance to prove what else she might do.

One day, the magic whispered to Saorlaith that a stranger from afar would soon arrive, though her attempts to scry specifics went maddeningly unanswered. Whoever this stranger was, her blood raced at the thought of it. Some great warrior, perhaps? Some mighty challenge to overcome? Perhaps the Old Stag God had finally answered her prayers.

The day the Emperor came to Dún na Badb, Saorlaith was beside herself with anticipation, warmly welcoming the stranger and treating him to the finest hospitality of her people. She could tell at once that glory rode in this man’s wake, and that it was his destiny to show Saorlaith hers. She told him she would follow where he led, but formality required him to defeat her in the holy Carnfēth, the War Judgement – a sacred battle rite to determine leadership. As Queen, she would be shamed if she knelt before another warrior who had not defeated her in battle. Either the Emperor would defeat her in single combat without sorcery, or be denied his Primarch. The duel was the stuff of legend, and it is said to have lasted for nine days. Saorlaith was not the type to show quarter, and nor was the Emperor willing to relinquish his Eleventh to this backwater world. From the lowest valley to the highest peak, the two clashed, neither showing the slightest hint of false judgment or failed skill. Eventually, however, Saorlaith began to worry that the battle might have no end. Perhaps they were equally skilled, and the battle might last forever… neither fit to command or to be commanded, neither able to cow the other. In this moment, the battle was decided, for Saorlaith, distracted for the slightest measure, lost her footing and fell upon the sword she had given the Emperor. Yet Saorlaith was delighted – in having lost, she found renewed purpose. She had not finished her list of glories, and this loss symbolized that for her. The Emperor promised her an army unlike anything she had ever seen, and he promised her not simply a planet to conquer, but a galaxy in which to seek her glory. Saorlaith would never have refused such an offer.

During the ritual ceremony in which Saorlaith returned governorship of Dún na Badb to the Queen Mother Morna, the Emperor visibly recoiled, startled, in the Queen Mother’s presence as she caught his eye. It is not known why. The two leaders spoke no more with each other than the ceremony demanded, and the Emperor uncharacteristically left with barely-disguised haste, as though being in Morna’s mere presence was either panic or pain-inducing.

Returning to Holy Terra with the Eleventh Primarch, the Emperor was pleased to see her eagerness to take up the Great Crusade, and even more pleased to see that she had healed from her battle wound quickly. He judged, correctly, that she would indeed be a force to be reckoned with once paired with warriors who matched her skills and ferocity.

The Eleventh Legion, the Storm Sovereigns, was indeed a fine army as promised, but the largely Terran recruits disgusted Saorlaith. Clean-shaven Astarte warriors and standardized livery made them all look identical to the Mountain Queen, and she immediately set about instilling her way and her image among her new army, just as she’d done at Dún na Badb. Her warriors would decorate their bronze-colored armor with personalized and intricate highland knotwork emblematic of her home world. Their hair and beards would be encouraged to grow wild, often being elaborately braided or otherwise decorated with feathers and beads. Before battle, they performed ritual war chants, songs, and dances, and decorated their flesh with blue paint. This was no mere physical affectation, but a vow to become as beasts who knew no retreat or surrender. The act of painting focused the Astarte’s resolve, steeling them for the blood and carnage to come. Further, like her brother Primarchs, she began to draw new recruits for the legion from her homeworld, filling its ranks with boisterous and passionate, but highly skilled, barbarian highland warriors she knew the measure of and trusted more than the "outsiders" she'd been saddled with. These warriors now had the technology and the means to follow their Queen to the cosmos, and to elevate their kind of warfare to a scale and level they had never previously dreamed possible, and the newly forged “Black Eagles” legion took wing to the stars, taking their appetites for blood and battle with them, ready to find glory and conquest wherever they landed.

The Black Eagles were much changed by Saorlaith’s leadership – she brought with her not just the battle traditions of her people, but also their sorcery. Those who she considered the most capable and trustworthy of her “Sons” were inducted into secret rites and taught a kind of magic that exposed weakness in the enemy, by revealing secrets or bringing flaws to the surface where they could do the most damage, in a way that simply appeared to be a horrific “run of bad luck” when it could be least afforded. The mystic chants of the highland marines’ sorcery and eerie bellowing of their animalistic war horns presaged doom to a thousand worlds that dared defy the Legion and the Great Crusade as their imminent assault would batter and break an enemy that was never as ready to face them as they might have believed or hoped.

Despite Saorlaith’s incredible battlefield successes, she found few friends among her Brothers. Angron was too much of a brute in her eyes; she was all for testing her mettle in battle and achieving glory, but Angron was simply about slaughter, like a rabid war dog Saorlaith would have happily put down herself had she been allowed to. Mortarion was perhaps her first real rival among the Primarchs, detesting her and her legion for their Druidic Craft, while Lorgar Aurelian saw in their rites and traditions the mark of heresy. Fulgrim she dismissed as a preening peacock too concerned with glamor to find true glory, Alpharius as a fool and a tryhard leader too clever for his own good by half, wasting his and the Imperium’s time on his overly complex schemes instead of simply winning when a simple win presented itself, and Pertuabo and Ferrus Manus confounded her with their hatred for weakness rather than their love of strength. Roboute Guilliman, Horus Lupercal, and Rogal Dorn all but outright hated her for her unwillingness to yield to their strategies and authority. Even Vulkan’s legendary patience and compassion met its limits with Saorlaith, who was far too independent to listen to his counsel. And in Sanguinius… Saorlaith saw something worrying. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but in Sanguinius she saw a lurking darkness that terrified her, and she avoided Sanguinius to no end. She made an effort to befriend fellow outsider Konrad Kurze, but his growing instability brought their friendship to an early end. Corvus Corax’s secrecy and tendency to favor subtler means, as well as his favoring of loyalty and obedience, grated on Saorlaith’s nerves. Jaghatai Khan rubbed her the wrong way, simply by being too much like her for them to have ever gotten along. While she didn’t dislike Magnus the Red, she felt his focus was too much on the mysterious and the ethereal, and the way he regarded her almost as a puzzle box to solve unnerved her. Ironically, Lion El Jonson, who had an upbringing relatively similar to hers, and in many ways might have been considered the other side of her coin, and therefore might have understood her better than any of the other Primarchs, held her in disdain for her “Barbarian ways” even if she secretly admired his results and composure. It was Leman Russ who was perhaps the most kindred of spirits, a true brother to her when all others grated, drifted, or avoided her. The Eagle and the Wolf, the Celt and the Viking, the Queen and the Chieftain, frequently fought alongside each other and for a time, they shared a close friendship, and the Black Eagles and Space Wolves accomplished great things together, but like all good things, this too was doomed to come to an end. Finally, Ailani, Saorlaith’s lone sister, and Primarch of the Imperial Hospitallers, never gave up hope on the wild warrior queen. Despite their frequent disagreements as Ailani’s peaceful healing ways clashed wildly with Saorlaith’s violent lust for conquest, Ailani was always there to listen to Saorlaith’s grievances and frustrations, and while they never saw eye to eye, the two sisters grew close as the Crusade went on.

However, the fate of the Eleventh Legion was sealed, and they would not see the Horus Heresy play out. With her growing frustrations with her brothers gnawing at her, Saorlaith had become more headstrong and reckless than ever, and Leman Russ began to see her as a liability. Further, Russ began to question her loyalty, as, ever the soul of tact, Saorlaith bitterly complained of the Emperor's crackdowns on the Druidic Craft of her people and their worship of the Old Stag God. In her mind, this was not what she had signed up. She had been promised glory for her and her people, not this... colonialist cultural censorship that threatened to eradicate keystones of her culture and heritage. As the Emperor began to make increasing strides towards banishing religion and sorcery from the Imperium, Saorlaith chafed more and more, becoming bitter and paranoid towards her brothers. She knew they disliked and even mistrusted her, and some like Mortarion and Alpharius were already claiming they could handle her campaigns more effectively than she could. Saorlaith deigned to let them try.

As Saorlaith and the Black Eagles outright began to refuse orders in pursuit of chasing their own glory independently, Leman's already waning patience wore out, and he brought his case to the Emperor, who advised the Sixth Primarch to “chastise” his sister and her legion. Unfortunately, by this time, Ailani had already begun conspiring with her sister to leave the Imperium entirely with their respective legions and peoples, with a dream to establishing their own free realm in the wilds of space, far apart from an Imperium both had gradually become increasingly disillusioned with. The gentle Ailani's blood boiled at the Emperor's treatment of her; she had never particularly willingly agreed to his Crusade, and for hundreds of years he had taken her home world hostage to ensure her continued compliance. Seeing in her so-perfectly opposite sister such incredible similarity, the two had plotted to desert. Let the Emperor have his Grand Vision. In some back corner of the universe, the two sisters would have theirs: a place where they and their people could live free from the Emperor's tyranny. Saorlaith began pulling her veteran warriors from the lines and assembling a small but elite force meant to safeguard and evacuate Dún na Badb. These were marines recruited from the planet, who had ties and roots and loyalties there. Her Terran recruited marine veterans remained on the front lines, mentoring the youngest and least experienced Marines to allay suspicion that her dedication to the cause might be lacking until she had already left. Let those wayward sons of hers know nothing of her plot, that way they might be kept safe, or as safe as possible, from the consequences of her decisions. Perhaps there would even be room for reconciliation in the future, should the winds of destiny blow in that direction.

However, upon returning home to Dún na Badb to evacuate it, Saorlaith was shocked and angered to find the Space Wolves already assembled there, with Leman Russ at the head of his force to deal with Saorlaith in person. Her heart sank, and her anger soared, as she assumed Leman Russ had already discovered her plot to desert. In fact, he had not, and he had simply been hoping to resolve what to him was a disciplinary matter that had far exceeded an allowable scale. Two clashing sets of intentions and views of reality among leaders neither of which being particularly known for diplomatic restraint is seldom a pleasant matter, and it was not long before an unforgivable mistake was made. Who fired first is both unknown and unimportant, but it was held that the battle was titanic; indeed, it was the most ferocious either the Sixth or the Eleventh legions had ever partaken in, for no Space Marine had ever faced a threat quite like another Space Marine. Yet for all the battle’s horror, it was ultimately mere prelude to the nightmares of the Horus Heresy to come. It is generally held that the Space Wolves emerged victorious. To her own shock, Saorlaith lost a second time, this time to Leman Russ, who gravely wounded her in single combat, though he was either unwilling or unable to complete the kill. Arriving in the Primarch's greatest moment of need was Medrawt, the feared First Captain of the Black Eagles, and her mightiest and most favored champion. Medrawt was a peerless warrior in the legion, long rumored to be the Primarch's biological son. Whatever the case he was among the first to be recruited to the Legion at Dún na Badb, and it was also at Dún na Badb that evidence suggests Medrawt proved his mettle and did the impossible by managing to distract and hold off Leman Russ long enough to facilitate Saorlaith's retreat from the battlefield, and then retreat in turn. Despite her escape with Medrawt and a host of survivors, her legion’s numbers were significantly culled in the battle. Three out of five Black Eagles who took part in the battle perished, crippling the Legion, and the novice Black Eagles and Terran veterans carrying the Legion's part of the Great Crusade elsewhere in the galaxy with no knowledge of the betrayal were no safer, being swiftly turned on by their supposed allies and eradicated without ever receiving an explanation why.

While Leman Russ and his legion purged Dún na Badb, he was puzzled to find Morna, the Queen Mother, completely absent. Reporting his findings to the Emperor, the Emperor showed a rare and fleeting moment of genuine fear upon hearing that the Old Crone Queen had vanished. But, this soon vanished, as, coupled with his rage at Ailani’s much more successful rebellion and rout of the World Eaters, in part due to the survivors of the battle of Dún na Badb arriving to assist in the evacuation of Ailani’s homeworld of Takiko, the Emperor turned his formidable psychic prowess to burning the errant women from history, along with their traitorous sons. The two had dared defy him. They had made a mockery of his power and authority. Their rebellion and flight from the Imperium threatened to undermine all he hoped to build by showing that ways other than Imperial Unity might be viable. It could not stand. It would not. Even Leman Russ, who personally fought his sister at the climax of the battle, forgot her in an instant. The records were purged. The monuments were destroyed. The Second and Eleventh Legions’ victories were “assigned” to other legions. All evidence of them was destroyed, except for the hole they left behind.

It is no wonder that the Eleventh Legion and their Primarch failed to aid Terra during the Horus Heresy. Of course, they had fled so far it would be ages, thousands of years, even, before they learned of the Heresy. Saorlaith’s feelings on the matter are unknown, but most assuredly complicated as she weeps for her lost people and quintimated sons.

Among those who are able to intuit the existence of the old Second and Eleventh Legions, and their Primarchs, doubtless a sense of wonder must set in.

What must have happened, that nobody can remember their names, their faces, or their deeds? Could it have been even worse than the Horus Heresy? Obviously it must have been, for the Traitor Primarch’s names are still remembered and the Second and Eleventh have been totally buried and forgotten.

Do these Primarchs live still? Do they regret their rebellion and treason? And perhaps… might they one day return? Surely if Guilliman and Jonson have returned in the Imperium’s darkest hours… all things must be possible. What redemption might lie ahead for Saorlaith Clannmorna of Dún na Badb, the Weeping Eleventh?

[lucifer-s-understudy]

Tlatia a.k.a. Primarch. (Ibrahem Swaid)

Someone named Female Primarch #2 already her name is Micte Mori (allegedly) so this one can be #11

"who cares, she not cannon" feels...wrong to say... but call her what you like. I'm calling her Prmrch#11

[lumi-klovstad-games]

The Fate of the Eleventh in M42 (Ailani Timeline)

[EDIT]: Written well before I penned my entry for Saorlaith Clannmorna, so I hadn't yet decided on gender and stuff for the Eleventh when I wrote this part of the AU. But Saorlaith's a chick. She's definitely a chick. Did NOT inherit the Emperor's Hero Syndrome though -- more like his arrogant bullheadedness and refusal to take good advice.

So if only Ailani and the Second Legion returned to the Imperium during the Fourth Tyrannic War, what happened to the Eleventh Primarch and Legion in the Ailani Timeline? So glad you asked, literally absolutely nobody.

The Eleventh remains wracked by shame and depression for having lost his home world, and the home worlds of his legion, to the Space Wolves prior to their flight from the Imperium. With her brother unable to recover, Ailani did the best thing she could under the circumstances: she did not force him to return with her, only asking that he join her "when he was ready". Some of his Marines did accompany the Second Legion in their return to the Imperium of Man, and they went with the Eleventh's blessing to do so.

Ailani had herself considered abandoning the Imperium to its fate (whatever fate that might be), but in the end, she could not damn teeming quadrillions of people to horrific deaths by her inaction when she had the power and resources to make a difference, even if that difference might only be a temporary one that still ends in mankind's eventual extinction sooner or later. "Idle Primarchs are the Chaos Gods' playthings", after all.

The Eleventh Primarch will return with his legion one day, but it is not this day.

For now, he weeps still.