What Primarch could the Necrons have?

[Fantomex]

Hmm, if a primarch, that'd be pretty cool.
No, VERY cool.

But of course, who? First, we'll red out all the obvious ones that it won't be..

Loyalists
Lion El'Jonson - asleep in Caliban
Jaghatai Khan - Missing (possibly in Commoragh)
Leman Russ - Missing (and with his armour found on a daemon world, quite naked too..)
Rogal Dorn - Dead, body kept on the Phalanx
Sanguinius - Dead, body recovered and taken back to Baal.
Ferrus Manus - Dead on Isstvan (without a head, but his hands remaining)
Roboute Guilliman - Dead-ish, in stasis on Macragge
Vulkan - Missing
Corax - Missing, heading towards the Eye of Terror

Traitors
Fulgrim - Daemon Prince of Slaanesh
Perturabo - Daemon Prince Undivided
Night Haunter - Dead by M'Shen
Angron - Daemon Prince of Khorne
Mortarion - Daemon Prince of Nurgle
Magnus The Red - Daemon Prince of Tzeentch
Horus - Dead, aboard the Vengeful Spirit, original body and clones eventually destroyed
Lorgar - Daemon Prince Undivided
Alpharius/Omegon - Dead? Not dead? Traitor? Not traitor? Who knows?!

So, we can narrow down the list of possible candidates (or at least, unaccounted-for bodies) to:

Lion El'Jonson - Asleep in Caliban. Unless the Necrons can magically kidnap him of course..
Jaghatai Khan - Missing, hinted at being enslaved by the Dark Eldar (we'll assume this is true).
Leman Russ - Missing, armour found on a daemon world.
Corax - He's off to the Eye of Terror, we know how those journeys tend to turn out..
Night Haunter - Nope. He's dead, headless, and there is no reason for the Necrons to have his body..
Alpharius/Omegon - It could be! But it won't be! Or will it? Or won't it?!

So we have our choice of two!
Out of the duo, I'll say that, simply, the most likely candidate for being there is Ferrus Manus.

Vulkan seemed to have some kind of long-term retreat planned, like Lion El'Jonson.
The fact that he left clues for the Salamanders to find him leaves me to assume that he had some grand plan in action and felt quite confident that he'd ride it out..

But Ferrus Manus? That makes sense.
After Isstvan, only a handful of Iron Hands made it off-world.
Sure, they had the bulk of the legion elsewhere, but they were travelling slowly in the warp and didn't really have much they could do about it.

As such, although there may have been later attempts at equipment/geneseed recovery we don't know about, the Iron Hands lost Ferrus' body.
Fulgrim presented Horus with Ferrus' head. That means the body was likely to have been taken somewhere as well.

Of course, with no mention of it and the planet abandoned afterwards, there is every possibility that it was picked up by the Necrons.
With the rumoured new background, this makes even more sense.

Ferrus Manus was a fraction of a living god of humanity, the Emperor, as were his brothers.
Each had unique attributes that set them apart from the others.

Ferrus not only had this great power, but he also had his metal hands after defeating Asirnoth, which we can all safely agree was some form of C'tan.
With the new background of C'tan shards could we also assume that Asirnoth could have been one of the shards of the Void Dragon?

Plenty of fluff in the HH novels has now shown the sheer power of the Void Dragons influence over the Mechanicum, eg the Akashic Reader. The combination of Necron ingenuity and warp-based power should surely be a potent mix indeed.

And Ferrus Manus, being super-wrought flesh containing immense warp power, also combined with a C'tan shard?
Yeah.
That's mind-bendingly powerful stuff.

With the Necrons apparently now trying to find their way back into flesh bodies, surely the Iron Hands are the cosmic opposite of such a plan?

What could be more likely to pique the curiosity of the Necrons (and possibly return from the dead) than an amalgamation of two fractions of two entirely different gods that both in their own way can rejuvenate and become undying?

tl;dr - Ferrus Manus might be with the Necrons in a trophy cabinet.

[DrLove42]

You make a lot of good points...although i'm sure Alpharius is dead.

Manus does seem a likely option

UNless its one of the 2 unknowns, striken from the records for falling prey to the Necrons?

And does GW mentioning what is potentially a primarch suggest a slgiht advancement in the fluff?

[plawolf]

Manus does make sense, however the big problems with that are:

a) Necrons were never recorded as being active during the Heresy. That was the height of the IoM's powers, so if Necrons were wondering around, it is extremely unlikely that they would have gone unnoticed by the vast number of crusade fleets running around. The 'they killed everyone that saw them' reason wouldn't wash here as there is no way crusade fleets going missing, even minor ones, would go unnoticed or not bring a dozen mroe crusade fleets down on the last known location of the missing one. With pretty much all crusade fleets having a sizeable Astartes element, it is also extremely unlikely that the Necrons would be able to take them out without at the very least distress calls going out first.

Just look at Horus Rising. A distress call from a Blood Angel crusade fleet brought two Primarchs, one of which was the warmaster, to investigate. While Horus would not be personally leading the hunt for every crusade fleet gone missing or in serious trouble, there is a very good chance one or more of the other Primarchs would.

Even if the Necrons were around that early, them not having been discovered by the IoM would indicated that they were operating outside of Imperial space or on a small enough scale as to escape detection. Neither of those cases would make it likely that they would happen to be in the right place at the right time to snatch Manus' body.

b) It's boring. Aside from the 2 Iron Hands players out there, who else would really care about a Necron Lord having the body of a dead Primarch? Nothing winds people you like false promise, and GW would get a lot of flack if they whipped up excitment about the Necrons having a Primarch only to come around at the end and say, 'oh well, it's just a corpse'.

GW gains nothing but looses plenty in such a scenario, thus making it extremely unlikely.

[eldargal]

I have to agree with plawolf, Necrons were asleep during the HH and it is a pretty boring option. Dead primarch in stasis < living primarch in stasis

[MarneusCalgar]

I also tend to think is one alive Primarch more than a dead one...

Ferrus Manus hands can be an apart trophy, also but... I think he imprisons an alive Primarch, hoping to know, or extract from him, more secrets of the Empire of men, their breeding nest

[Necron2.0]

THIS!!!


This is the heretofore unmentioned (but not undocumented) 21st primarch, Peaux F'Dah. When the forces of chaos scattered the primarchs throughout the galaxy, Peaux landed on a tomb world. Unlike with the other primarchs, he was never found. He was eventually captured and imprisoned in a statsis cabinet (one formerly used to house a cache of Necron cloaks and shrouds). Even so, to this day a faint tune can be heard emanating from the cabinet - a song about rainbows, birds singing and a desire to ascend to the heavens atop said rainbow.

[GrenAcid]

@up

You won!.... all hail Necron2.0!

[Kushial]

I think an interesting twist would be that it is Lion'el Johnson, and that it is actually Luther who the Dark Angels have in stasis.

[eldargal]

I think it is fairly certain it is Jonson in the Rock, though it would be nifty if it were Luther in stasis. Dark Angels find out, raid on Trazyn the Wossnames storage facility escalates into big Imperium v Necron war. Make it a global campaign with everyone else getting in on the action (Eldar to stop the Necrons winning, Orks to krump 'eads, Tau because they are interfering busy bodies, Tyranids cos eating stuff is good etc.) and call it a day.

[Sanguineone]

I thought 'The Final Secret' was missed out of the current DA dex? Although it would be a trip if the destruction of Calaban was helped along by the emergence of a Necron Ship like in the Souldrinkers novel. Doubt it will happen though as they have put too much time into the watchers in the dark.
Thanks for the heads up on Curze Plawolf, I was just going off hints in the 3rd ed Chaos dex. Such a waste of a good character. Can you recommend the Nightlords books these things happen in?
Also I seem to have missed Manus fighting a C'tan?!?!?! Thought his arms were like Sanguinius' wings and warp mutations.

Plus Sanguinius ain't dead, he's elevated to god hood like the Emperor guiding his children from his giant floating golden ball through the blood chalices and genetic memory (I wish). Happy Sanguinius Day!

If the Necrons did have the body of a Primarch, even a dead one wouldn't that give them access to the generic material to create new bodies perhaps not on the Scale of a Primarch but maybe on the marine level? They are after all light years ahead of of the Imperium.