Towards the end of the Age of Strife, the Emperor crafted 20 magical clone babies that he called Primarchs. The forces of Chaos didn’t like the Emperor very much, so they kidnapped his magical clone babies and threw them randomly all over the galaxy, and the Emperor had all kinds of adventures finding them again. This thread is about the last magical clone baby recovered – Alpharius and Omegon, Primarch(s) of the 20th Legion.
Here we are, my fellow travelers; we’ve journeyed to the end of the Magical Clone Baby saga, and I’m afraid it’s not going to be a terribly satisfactory ending. Not that Alpharius (and) Omegon isn’t (aren’t) interesting, it’s just that they’ve deliberately seeded so many lies and so much misinformation about themselves that it’s hard to build an interesting and coherent narrative. We *think* that this Magical Clone Baby was actually twins – brothers named Alpharius and Omegon – who considered themselves one soul in two bodies. However, there are no reliable accounts of the two of them being in the same place at the same time.
There’s no great story of how the Emperor met his son(s) – the 20th Primarch is the only Primarch the Emperor never met in person. Horus found Alpharius Omegon after the Emperor had retired back to Earth to work on his secret tunnel into the Eldar webway, and he found him (them) in deep space, far from any planet, and Horus never knew they (he) were (was) twins (pretending to be twins). The 20th Primarch was rarely seen outside of his very distinctive but frequently redesigned power armor, no two of their other brothers shared the same description of their youngest brothers, and almost immediately upon being given a Legion did he (they) start having their legionnaires pretend to be them (him) in strategy and council meetings.
One or both of the brothers possessed an innate psychic ability to ‘cloak’ themselves by making himself completely neutral and uninteresting to those around him – a sort of “somebody else’s problem” field. Therefore, Alpharius Omegon can claim to have been at so many important historical events without fear of meaningful contradiction that it’s just as meaningful to say he (they) was at all the meaningful turning points of the Horus Heresy as to say he was at none of them and was busy with his (their) own shadow war of subterfuge and covert operations.
Two of my favorite heresies about the brothers are about as supported by the text as the little canonical information we have. One is that Alpharius and Omegon were servants of the largely unknown Chaos God Malal, who represents Chaos turned against itself. Another is that Alpharius and Omegon were the two rejected Magical Clone Babies, who killed the original 20th Primarch, and took his place.
It is believed by those who do think that Alpharius Omegon was actually Alpharius AND Omegon that one of the brothers was killed in the Heresy, but there are so many contradictory stories about this Primarch that even that may not be true. The Alpha Legion continues to operate all across the Galaxy, engaged in bizarre and byzantine schemes that often harm their fellow traitor legions as much as they do damage to the Imperium.
Open Thread, I’m not saying that the commenter you blocked is Alpharius (or) Omegon, but I’m not NOT saying that either. The 20th Primarch is a land of confusion and has spread more misinformation than Tiktok. Be kind to one another and have a good day posting!