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He’s not. They only found a hand.

My books are packed right now but you're off. They have his whole skeleton hanging in a nook. Maybe these days they only show off the hand, maybe they're jealous of chapters whose primarch might still be alive but no. He's as dead as Dilinger.

Are you talking about in terms of how the setting should be because it's what's overwhelmingly likely and makes sense, or in terms of how much money gw could make if they published a 40k version of him?

Voss wrote:

 Adeptekon wrote:
I'd say it's reasonable to assume that with no one knowing where his body is, that his hand is simply and anchor for a future return.

Sometimes history is just set dressing.
Not every detail needs to be a hook. In fact, most details shouldn't be hooks. Makes for a stupidly busy mess.

Once upon a time, GW was better about this.

Once upon a time the GW machine wasn't a license to print money.

Also, if there's anything we've learned in the past few years, dead isn't dead when it comes to Warhammer. Lucius, Kharn, Fabius, and probably Ahriman eventually, are all functionally immortal. And they're just Astartes.

I can't believe they'd bring back Dorn before Leman

I personally don't need Dorn to come back, I'm somewhat indifferent to it. I do feel like it's less about story than sales in my fairly limited knowledge.

While I can understand, that since I grew up with 80's and 90's commericalization of everything, but Primarchs returning kinda goes against the whole revelation in First Lord of the Imperium, that they were tools not meant to live forever.

But I guess the justification would be the HH screwed everything up and so they must be brought back to reconquer everything.

After that they can kill each other off, and then be brought back in another 20 years real time for more sales.

Just remember: They brought back Squats.. And a Zoat.
Glad they didn't do Fimirs in AoS..

What is with the Conrad quote? Some people say it’s proof he’s alive? Others say it’s proof he’s dead?

Curze could see the future and his visions always turned out true. He saw Manus's death, Fulgrim's Daemonic form, and Lorgar's fall to Chaos. His vision of Dorn is the latter being dragged into the dark by a hundred murderers being stabbed all the way.
Curze also knew his own death. He knew the Imperium/ the Emperor would send the Callidus after him to punish Curze for his many many many many war crimes, claiming the whole thing vindicated Curze's philosophy of ruling through fear and punishing all those who would act against the laws of the land.

 Gert wrote:
Curze could see the future and his visions always turned out true. He saw Manus's death, Fulgrim's Daemonic form, and Lorgar's fall to Chaos. His vision of Dorn is the latter being dragged into the dark by a hundred murderers being stabbed all the way.
Curze also knew his own death. He knew the Imperium/ the Emperor would send the Callidus after him to punish Curze for his many many many many war crimes, claiming the whole thing vindicated Curze's philosophy of ruling through fear and punishing all those who would act against the laws of the land.

Hmm interesting. So who or what dragged Dorn? Was it Iron Warriors, Sons, Daemons?

Chaos followers, likely Astartes of some kind. Dorn has always had the most irritating death as it's very specific in certain ways but extremely contradictory in others.

The Black Crusade he fights against is left as led by an unknown Chaos war-leader and the ship he disappeared on, the Sword of Sacrilege, is a Despoiler class which wasn't introduced until M36. Yet it is known that by late M31 the Primarchs had all disappeared and by the War of the Beast in mid-M32 the Primarchs were considered mythical beings and the Heresy was widely believed to be a legend rather than an actual conflict by even most of the High Lords.

The issue lies with GW not clarifying the "history" of the 40k universe very well and leaving lots of things unchanged since they were introduced about 20 years ago.
There are things we can hand wave away, however. Black Crusades are not the sole purview of Abaddon and any Chaos warlord can lead one. The nature of the Warp and its effects with time means that despite the Sword of Sacrilege being built almost five thousand years after Dorn's disappearance, it could easily have been part of the Chaos force that Dorn fought against. We can also blame discrepancies on the fact that the Imperium is terrible at collecting and storing knowledge. The Apocrypha of Davio for example, was an attempt to list all of the Second Founding Chapters yet it was written two thousand years after the event in question and was never completed as well.

usmcmidn wrote:
I know they found his hand but never a body. In old lore they recovered his body but as everyone reminds me, old lore is no longer cannon. So what do y’all think? And why??

I hope so. Not because I hate Dorn, but I don't want the setting to be filled with primarchs all over the place again. The time of the Great Crusade has passed, only a few scattered sons remain. Curze, Sanguinius, Ferrus, Horus, and Alpharius should stay dead. I like the tragedy and effect it has on each of the "Orphan Legions".

They seem to almost to all be in a state of disarray or disfunction. The Blood Angels are all slowly falling to their genetic flaws, the Black Legion are literally a shadow of themselves (metaphorically and figuratively speaking), and the Night Lords are relegated to only fights where they can overwhelm the enemy with sheer numbers. The Alpha Legion has no clue what their mission even is anymore/are so varied and different that they can't cohesively function as a united legion. The Iron Hands are going further and further into the "replace everything with steel" mindset that dominates the legion (despite Ferrus disliking this). Like, a bunch of children who didn't develop properly, it's quite tragic honestly.

I wouldn't mind seeing how such a scenario effects the Sons of Dorn.

I'm tossing my hat into the "Dead as a Dorn Nail" ring. Prince of Crows has him being killed off in a Curze vision. Now, since the vision doesn't state an exact time, we could all be falling into the prophecy trap assuming we know the events referenced. For all we know, Curze's vision could have been well into the future of Warhammer 50k. I don't think this is the case, but this will be GW's out if they bring him back.

I'm also voting dead because there are far more interesting Primarchs to bring back. Khan, Vulkan, or Leman would all be good candidates. Though I really want GW to commit and double down on Legion of the Damned. Swell their ranks with marines lost in the warp since the Fall of Cadia, and give them a headless Ferrus Manus, wreathed in fire, as a Hero. Doesn't even have to be as a leader, but as the epitome of Imperial Vengeance made manifest.

The more I consider it, the more i like the idea of the Imperial Fists dressing his scrimshawed skeleton in armor and carrying him around Weekend at Bernies style, having him to wave to the other, alive, Primarchs from a distance and such.

It seems very in character for them.

 darklord wrote:
I'm tossing my hat into the "Dead as a Dorn Nail" ring. Prince of Crows has him being killed off in a Curze vision. Now, since the vision doesn't state an exact time, we could all be falling into the prophecy trap assuming we know the events referenced. For all we know, Curze's vision could have been well into the future of Warhammer 50k. I don't think this is the case, but this will be GW's out if they bring him back.

I'm also voting dead because there are far more interesting Primarchs to bring back. Khan, Vulkan, or Leman would all be good candidates. Though I really want GW to commit and double down on Legion of the Damned. Swell their ranks with marines lost in the warp since the Fall of Cadia, and give them a headless Ferrus Manus, wreathed in fire, as a Hero. Doesn't even have to be as a leader, but as the epitome of Imperial Vengeance made manifest.

If Curze’s visions were all accurate. Which is by no means the case.

Leaving behind interpretation, Curze was right.
He spent some time with Sanguinius who tried to convince him that the future wasn't set in stone which actually terrified Curze because then his life was meaningless.
Both eventually discovered that their visions would always come to pass and that the end result would always be the same.
Then Sanguinius stuffed Curze in a pod and shot him into space.

It’s no question really.
The ret con was done for a very clear reason, to make him not be dead.
Whether he ever becomes a returning Primarch to be chosen, that’ll depend on where things go and what they decide. But it’s definitely in a plan for potential storylines.
Just like Russ, Vulkan and so on, they are all set up to just come on back when they need to bring one.

Russ is almost a given at this point.
Sanguinius no, or I’d bloody hope not, but they will need something proper big to put in that Codex too.
Fulgrim. He’s next on that side.
But after that, it’ll just be what traitor and loyal Primarchs do they want to bring back and when to sort story/make money.

Danny76 wrote:
It’s no question really.
The ret con was done for a very clear reason, to make him not be dead.
Whether he ever becomes a returning Primarch to be chosen, that’ll depend on where things go and what they decide. But it’s definitely in a plan for potential storylines.
Just like Russ, Vulkan and so on, they are all set up to just come on back when they need to bring one.

Russ is almost a given at this point.
Sanguinius no, or I’d bloody hope not, but they will need something proper big to put in that Codex too.
Fulgrim. He’s next on that side.
But after that, it’ll just be what traitor and loyal Primarchs do they want to bring back and when to sort story/make money.

The fun one will be when they decide to bring Horus back.



(yes, the lore has always been that the Emperor destroyed Horus's soul; like that will stop GW...)


Thing is, though, most of the loyalist primarchs are merely MIA. Sure, we haven't heard from them in a ridiculously long time. But even discounting Dorn, where we've got a body part (which would seem to suggest that he likely died, even if most of his body is missing - which of course means that he'll eventually turn up alive), there's still a lot of primarchs that could likely be considered alive even if GW wasn't currently bringing them back. Khan, for instance, is just lost. Guilleman was confirmed alive long before recent events (in a coma, in a stasis field, mortally wounded, but still alive). Johnson was also confirmed alive (but apparently all tuckered out). Russ is off doing his own thing (or was; it's been thousands of years, after all). Vulkan literally can't be killed short of an "Emperor destroys Horus's soul" type of event. Corax is also off doing his own thing, possibly acting as Lorgar's personal boogeyman.

And we can be fairly certain that - at the very least - the traitors haven't killed any of the MIA primarchs. After all, if they had, they'd be bragging about it.

I don’t think a missing hand points to death. Particularly with the retcon of it now just being the hand, more points to him 100% not being Death.
But as you say eventually of course.

I don’t see the scope for Horus returning in the setting (and would sure hope he doesn’t).
Same with Ferrus and Sanguinius. Dead is dead.
Next least likely is Curze as he’s pretty close to definitely dead, more so than Dorn, but even then - video feed cuts out.
Maybe his vision showing that moment was not showing his death, but showing his final point in that part of his life. And he lived and it’s sll new visions now wherever he is.. who knows on that one
But certainly I think we will get a good four more loyal and three more Chaos. At some point.
Chapters with their own books are the obvious ones on each side. And then others can easy wrap into the CSM and SM books if they wanted to.

Danny76 wrote:

Same with Ferrus and Sanguinius. Dead is dead.

I've seen the idea floated (in fact, iirc someone's mentioned it within this very thread) of having Ferrus as the leader of the Legion of the Damned. That would require GW to change the lore back from "we think the members of a particular chapter all got sick with a really weird warp disease" to "Space marines who serve from beyond the grave.". But it's not as if it would be hard to do so.

Sanguinus and Horus already have stand-ins available (The Sanguinor and Abaddon, respectively). Not the same from a lore perspective. But they could easily qualify as primarch stand-ins on the table for their respective chapters.

If Kurze survived, he's probably secretly terrorizing the other traitors (maybe covertly giving Corax tips?).



IIRC, all of the other traitor primarchs except for Alpharion Omegon are known to be daemon princes, and thus are confirmed still alive. And who knows what's going on with Alpharion Omegon.



Story idea - Corax, Kurz, and Alpharion all periodically swap notes and ideas in a private chat group regarding methods and techniques on messing with the traitor legions. Corax doesn't know who he's talking to. Kurze knows he's talking to Corax, but doesn't know who Alpharion is. Only Alpharion knows who all three primarchs are.

He’s not dead because GW knows they can milk money with more primarchs. Even more likely now that Dorn and the Fists are the Mary Sues of the Heresy in the books and the tabletop. Eventually he will come back because who wants stakes or themes when there’s an east cash cow to beat.

That being said, I suspect he won’t come back for a minute. Other than Gman, all primarchs have come from variants chapters/legions. Magnus, Mortarion, and Angron form the mono god factions and the lion from the codex non compliant dark angels. If this pattern holds we’ll likely see Russ and something for the blood angels. That still leaves the Templars though. That would fit the pattern and give dorn a way in. Admittedly it would be ironic if he ended up in a codex that wouldn’t let the fists field him. Most likely he’d be allowed on both but that would be funny. So yes eventually he’s coming back.

Dorn, the Shrodinger's Primarch, is he dead or is he alive. He is both until his body shows up.

I came around to liking Dorn after choosing Crimson Fista as my Loyalist army.

That said, he should stay dead.

We only need 4 Traitor Primarchs. Magnus, Morty, Angron, and Fulgrim.

We only need 3 Loyalists.

Guilliman, Lion, and Russ.

Tygre wrote:
Dorn, the Shrodinger's Primarch, is he dead or is he alive. He is both until his body shows up.

What if like his body shows up but his skeleton is still hanging in the Fortress Monastery so he's just this blob that flops around!

I think I like that even better than the Weekend at Bernie's/Trouble with Harry solution.

Although that would be an awesome fun modelling project.

Mr Majorkill had a good point in one of his recent vids: We've seen the loyalists Primarchs come back and wield Emps' old weapons/ retconned shield.. But the Eagle Lightning Claw? Where is that? And Dorn is missing a hand... Hmmmmm....

 Nevelon wrote:
He’s comic book dead. And will remain so until they decide they want to sell a model for him in 40k.

His life/death is not a fixed point in the universe. Retconning Sang or Ferrus would have major implications. But Dorn is just this side of “missing, presumed dead” and could flip either way with a little good writing.

or bad writing and a cool model, which is more likely from GW.

I agree with this. I suspect Dorn, like most of the Loyalist Primarchs, will eventually return.

Since Gulliman"s reappearance, you can't say the return of any Primarch is definitively off the table, as the marketing and sales team dictate the background and not the other way around. We then have great long thread discussions validating these changes of background and seriously contemplating it, giving it way more thought than GW themselves.

I expect this when Ferrus Mannus returns as some sort of mechanicum contraption with his head in a bowl driving around on some sort of gun carriage!