 One day, during fairly routine cataloguing of the deeper and more sequestered archival stacks, your humble servant chanced upon discrepancy. These are not uncommon, mind you. The records of the records, the documentation, macro-directories are often hopelessly out of date or corrupted, simply ensuring the veracity of one's material is as much work as parsing the actual material itself. However, divergences are usually a difference in naming conventions, a misplacement of location, perhaps a chronological displacement readily accounted for by the sequential drift inherent in the multiple intersections of imperial calendar systems. No, no, this was altogether different. It is common for material to go unaccounted for only to resurface. It is far rarer for something to simply appear. And yet, here we are, or rather, here I am, having perused a volume entitled The Transit of the Human Soul Through Strife, that somehow simply appeared within the depository dedicated to the Battle of Pluto. Attempts to simply verify its existence prior to its discovery have met with no success. It could have had a single print run, but one suspects that, given its contents, it is likely bespoke. Any attempts to cross-reference the title through generalized historiography met with similar frustration, until one chanced upon a sole reference wafer for items pertaining to the almost fully redacted Chondax campaign. The wafer, as with the tome itself, had not technically existed before its discovery, but had offered one more piece of information about the book itself, an alternative cargonamen, the Codex Hydra. I would hope that keen students will I have at this point largely surmised what the work pertains to, although I doubt acolytes could conceive of the full scope. Indeed, I could not, nor could I even begin to quite believe what I had read, and re-read, and re-re-read. It is nothing less than the confessional of a primarch, the most enigmatic one at that, the Hydra himself, alfarious, 20th son of the emperor, and the claims he makes are nothing short of revelatory. That being said, they are all lies, or so the primarch himself states at the outset, along with the lie inherent in his name. What shall follow herein is a committing of the work ascribed to this alfarious to imperial chronicles, for the sake of nothing else than desperation on my part. Greater and better humanity than I have long laboured to unravel the sneaking threads that form what is the best discernable morass of history of the 20th Legion and their progenitor. Many have been simply driven mad by the process. I have previously attempted to render their chronicle as competently as I could, and even that experience was taxing. The Alpha Legion and alfarious existed. That much is historical fact. Everything else, it could be lies, it could be truth, we will never know. I suspect that is the point, but I shall hold such musings until later. For now, know then that this is a record of they who are Legion, the unbalanced scales, the perennial question, the primarch of the 20th Legion Astartes, alfarious. It is something oft remarked upon by those inducted within the deeper mysteries of creation, that the names in this universe of ours carry great power. Certainly this is one of the cardinal rules that govern the never-born, those hateful not-things of unreality itself, and as the warp mirrors the real, so too can it govern we ourselves, although in ways admittedly far subtler. To the Alpha Legion, the name of their primarch was akin to a memetic weapon. They and he would describe it as a tool, and while I must agree, simply giving it so benign a term, does not allow for the full scope of its offensive and defensive capabilities. Its clearest purpose was obfuscation. Avowedly not one to stand upon pride or ego, the primarch of the Legion allowed any of his sons to refer to themselves as alfarious, a symbol to them of purported unity and singularity of purpose, and a statement to those without of the same, but additionally of anonymity. To the Imperium at large, alfarious was not a person so much as an idea, a perception routinely confirmed by the Alpha Legion themselves, as, even when placed in a position where the primarch's presence was by all standards of protocol and decorum demanded, they would often instead send an individual who, while purporting to be the primarch, was on many occasions confirmed to not be, simply an impersonator, bearing the primarch's will. His name alone invokes all that it needs to, even if all it needs to do is confuse, frustrate, and obfuscate. The name, you see, has power. It was not alone amongst his brothers to bear such harshly isolationist tendencies, the con of the fifth Legion white scars being a distant second, with even the Warhawk's mysteries a result of more ignorance on the part of those who treated with him as opposed to deliberate choices of the primarch himself. As such, the chronicling of the life of the 20th son is functionally impossible. There will only ever be the ability to infer, as one can never be certain if the account one is reading is of the primarch, or one of his sons, or a combination of both, or an outright fabrication in its own right, coils within coils, yet always the name, the name endures. For the purposes of clarity within this record, we must render a terminology at the outset. Arpharius, the cognomen of the primarch, is hereby to be referred to as the idea that the primarch sought to embody as opposed to the actual individual. The human, the primarch who first bore the name, will herein be referred to as Alpha. It will be necessary, as there will be need of another idea, and another name, subsequently. The author of The Transit of the Human Soul through Strife, sets forth his account by naming himself Arpharius and stating that this is a lie. We have not finished one sentence of this damnable piece, and we are already unsure of everything that may follow. Regardless, we shall for now refer to the author as Alpha, the tale initially accounts the early life of Arpharius, and it is one of the clearest accounts of any primarch's infancy, if such a term can be used, that we have ever discovered. Its veracity is obviously questionable, but there is an impossibility in the details herein that they could possibly be known to any, but the smallest group of personages. The information has such clarity and such purity that I do question it. However, claiming to have been cognizant from the moment his genitor, Pod, crashed from the void into a wasteland upon an unknown planet, Alpha recounts that his instincts and grasp of reality were razor honed from the first moment of his cognition. To the extent that when Scavengers chanced upon his downed Pod, he was able to presume danger and hid. Such hiding was ultimately unnecessary, as uncannily soon after, the Pod was discovered by none other than the Emperor of Mankind, Alpha's father, who attracted by means unknown. His delight upon discovering his son was without measure. As any student of Imperial history will know, an accident had scattered the primarchs during their gestation, while the master of mankind still yet sought to unify Terra under his manner. The planet Alpha had landed upon was not recorded, but is known to have been an incredibly close spatial proximity to Terra itself, to permit the Emperor to travel there at such a vital time. To find a primarch, his 20th son, so close to the birthrock of humanity, kindled hope within the Emperor that others had yet survived, so unsure he had been up until that point. For Alpha's part, his existence was known only to the Emperor and Malkador the Sigillite, lest the instigators of the primarch's scattering seek to complete their aims altogether more thoroughly. Alpha would be trained and nurtured in secret, unbeknownst to the Imperium or even the Imperial household. The implications of this revelation alone are simply staggering, an almost beggar belief by how thoroughly they upend established Imperial history. Should it be true, the Emperor had a primarch at his side, the 20th and final son no less, from barely any time subsequent to their scattering, from before the unification wars had even concluded. Horace Lupacal of Cthonia was not the first found son. It was Alpha, Alphaeus, and he was known to the Emperor himself from before the Great Crusade had even left Sol's light. That such a thing had an impact on Alpha himself is doubtless. He recounts as much in the transit, detailing the training and development he received under Malkador's cool and exacting gaze. He reports to have witnessed, and indeed taken part in, the first combat engagement of the Ligionnes Astartes, during the failed coup of Grand Provost Marshal Uama Kandawair and Ligio Cataeus Primarch Ushotan, the last Thunder Warrior General-King. He infiltrated the Imperial Palace from without, attempting an assassination upon the Emperor's very life to prove the insufficiency of Ligio Custode's security measures. In doing so, he revealed his existence to the Captain General of the Guard, Constantine Valdor, and aided him in developing the Blood Games, a Custode's infiltration protocol designed to probe palace security that had been created following the betrayal of Amar Astarty and her destruction of Space Marine Genetic Stock. He was, as he claimed, present at the rediscovery of several of his brothers, including both the Lion of Caliban and Lorgar Aurelian. He was specifically not present at the discovery of Twelfth Primarch Angron, something he states is no regret of his. It would appear that, throughout the Unification Wars and the Great Crusade both, Alpha was present where he deemed his presence was necessary. He himself was a necessity by his own account, the Emperor's clandestine failsafe, an operative to root out that which could not be easily foreseen, to deal with that which was oft complicated, tenuous, or sensitive. Almost every regime throughout the great arc of human history has had need of such people, individuals of deniability, operatives to engage in what the state, for whatever reason, could not be seen to do so visibly, but nevertheless deemed a requirement for the perpetuation of its power and its existence. Special operations are not new, they are as old as the concept of the state. The difference with Alpha is simply in scale, and indeed, scope. It is oft hypothesized that the Primarchs, singular beings that they are, were molded in the Emperor's laboratory with specific purposes in mind, to fulfill specific outcomes in what impossible plan the Emperor was devising. It appears that within the individual of Alpha, and his given name, Alphaeus, the master of mankind vested a supremely keen independence and pragmatism. He was to protect the Imperium, but without guidance, unshackled from the command structure of the military regime to pursue the mission statement of his father's realm entirely unseen. He existed to be denied, a ghost carrying out the will of the Emperor, as the ghost saw it. This, in and of itself, corroborates entirely with what historiography has been built to account for the Alpha Legion's history during the Great Crusade. It is known that at its inception, the Legion was placed separately from the Remainders, along with the 6th and 18th legions to form the Emperor's Treefoil, legions whose development was conducted by distinct and even more sensitive standards than the remaining 17. While the 6th Legion Spacewolves and 18th Legion Salamanders would chart their own course from their creation upon Terra, forging their own destinies throughout the Crusade, the 20th effectively disappeared at the point they were confirmed to have reached the Alpha induction phase, namely the point in their development where they had attained minimum combat effective legion disposition of 1,000 Astartes. Despite this apparent redaction from the pages of history, discrepancies continued to appear across all Crusade theatres and fronts, of Astartes operating under no identifiable banners or markings, yet in possession of clearance codes and ident tags of unimpeachable provenance. Frustrated Imperial commanders who had gumption enough to query why covert Astartes were operating under their jurisdictions had their inquiries either rebuffed or perfunctorily shut down. There had been no such Astartes, for how could Astartes be operating outside of the Legion's framework? There were 20 legions officially, yet one could never be accounted for. The Ghost Legion, as some began to refer to them, were never a thing in actuality, more a presence discernable only by the unaccountable absence they left. Of course, the revelation of the Alpha Legion's later existence is fully part of Imperial record, as is the nature of their Primarch, but it was never at any point officially confirmed that the special operations of nameless Astartes in the decades prior to the 20th Sunveiling were in fact their doing. The Ghost Legion remained a question, denied officially, denied repeatedly. Or at least it had, until whomever penned this book directly made the link between them. Alpha, alfarious, was abroad across the Imperium and operating at the head of the 20th Legion Astartes from the beginning of the Great Crusade, according to his word. The manner of their comportment is entirely in line with historical record. They flew under no confirmable manners, or if needed deliberately appropriated the panoples of their fellow legions. They would often embed Alpha Legionnaires into other legions for intelligence gathering purposes, or as cover to achieve specific aims. As mentioned, Alpha himself did so too, to monitor the recovery of several of his brother Primarchs. This naturally raises questions, foremost amongst them, how could a Primarch, beings of physical stature that exceeded even those of the Astartes themselves, possibly disguise himself so thoroughly as to avoid detection. Surely they could be discernible by height alone. In the transit, Alpha purports to explain this. It is recorded in the annals of Crusade history that many of the Primarchs possessed uncanny abilities averged upon the Arcane, almost certainly the result of gene science and bioalchemy inherent in their creation. Many of these talents manifested a psychana of some form, from the premonitions of Curse and Sanguinius on one end of the scale, to the towering psychic might of Magnus the Red upon the other. It would appear that Alpha's rested in the former subtler side, as he claimed to be in possession of a talent that allowed him to bend perception, not to fully hide in plain sight, mind, or even to avoid wholesale detection, but more to cause him to blend in, obfuscating details that would cause questions, such as obviously physical height. It is often remarked that Alphaeus was quite slight of build and short of stature compared to his brothers, and many of his line marines were taller than regular Astartes. How much of this is actuality, versus the Primarch applying his gift, we will never know. The explanation is however a solid one, and indeed one in line with the cataloging of the uncanny abilities of the brothers as a whole. Crucially, it is also one that was not entirely without failure. On one notable occasion, in the aftermath of the defeat of the world prince, Seventh Legion Primarch Rogel Dorne sought to confront Alphaeus about the tactics utilized by his legion, the lord of the Seventh having deemed them needlessly wasteful. Alpha appeared before Dorne as one of a triad of identical figures, the other two being first captain Ingo Peck and harrowmaster Kel Silonius. Dorne, by Alpha's own account, picked him out of the three with ease. Interestingly, there is a fragmented chronicle, born of the archives of the first legion that reference a similar encounter, but with a completely different outcome. During the second rangdan zenocide, one of the darkest chapters of crusade history, when the fate of the imperial vision appeared to teeter upon the edge of oblivion, Alpha and the 20th Legion chose to reveal their presence to another at last, and to one of his own kin, the lion of Caliban and his dark angels. Ostensibly to offer aid to the first legion, who had been sustaining punishing losses in the ongoing zenocide, the entreaty held for Alpha, perhaps unsurprisingly, ulterior motives. He wished to obtain legion strength deployment within a volume that the first were campaigning in, in order to provide military cover for his own movements towards one specific planet. But he also wished, by his words, to assay the abilities of the lion, to test whether his vaunted brother, the emperor's first maid, could see through his own gift. He was not permitted to go unhelmed before the presence of a primark, but this was mitigated by his entourage for the meeting. Formed of a group of nine other Astartes, it included Consul Delegatus Altalon Skor, called King Killer, and his head hunter Attaches, Astartes named Gjatenna, Haimor, Dursius, and Itan, as well as several of the Legion's most senior figures, Shidranco, Kel Silonius, Ingo Peck, and Matthias Herzog. Of these, only Skor, Ranko, and Dursius retained their own faces. The remainder had, through gene seed expression or surgical augmentation or a combination of both, had their visages altered to be simulacrums of their primark. This was by almost all accounts the document them, a highly standard practice for the Legion, to better obfuscate their identities, so confusion amongst their enemies and allies both, and to preserve their inherent anonymity and unity. In this particular case, being the first open contact between the 20th and a fellow Legion, it was a statement, and doubly so when one considers its motive was also as a test for the lion himself. The firstborn primark's questioning to this strange delegation was pointed and direct, including asking the 20th whether they had been reunited with their primark. Alpha's answer was characteristic. No, he said they had not, which the lion obviously took at face value, but to the 20th the truth was plain. They had no need to be reunited, for they had been united from the beginning. Ultimately, the exchange was perfunctory, and perfectly within Alpha's allotted schemes. He was not recognized, he was allowed passage, and most importantly, allowed to assay one of his brothers, believing the lion to be peerless in many respects, yet also curiously self-absorbed, given to brooding over his own secret thoughts. One should not exactly be taken aback by the lion's performance in this meeting. To be considered broadly as one of the finest military commanders of the Imperium, to be the firstborn son of the master of mankind, only to find a legion you were never aware of, that was arriving at your doorstep uncalled for at full combat strength, and for that legion to bear the cognom in Alpha, an ancient Greekan term redolent of primacy and true beginnings, it would presumably be enough to unmane even a being a singular as a primark. Indeed, Alpha included within the transit many oblique and achronological asides, referencing his supposed contact and conversation with his other brothers, and his various opinions of their characters. He muses on whether it was responsible to deliberately deceive the lion, his own kin, in so blatant a fashion, but rest assured that the relationship web between this family of demigods was never an especially healthy one. The lion was not beloved by any, seen instead as aloof and distant at best, belligerently prideful at worst, as his famous jewel with the Wolf King displays. Thus, for his part, had at the time of Alpha's account fought two brothers, the lion and angron, and his hatred for Magnus the Red was already peaking. Alpha believes the arrogance of Ferris Manus and Fulgrim made them hard to love, but was also presumably the reason for their own unexpectedly close kinship, whereas the family as a whole reserved only pity for angron, who perceived it enough to become resentful in the extreme. Alphaeus was known to have something of a rivalry with Rebut Gulliman, which creeps into this account, with Alpha referring to the 13th Primark as being so utterly self-assured as to believe that he has not only solved warfare, but also thinks that it can be committed to a book. To the 20th Primark, the Khan and Korax were unknowable by their own choices, and Mortarian, bleakness personified, impossible to bring to conversation or any sort of relationship. Only in Alpha's mind did Vulcan and Sanguinius embody people anyone could truly love, possessed as they were of nobility and grace, respectively. And forms an interesting counterpoint to this is what we know of the brothers' own opinions of their serpentine kin. It is indeed confirmable that Gulliman held him in no higher regard, the tactics employed by the Alpha Legion, deemed by the Lord of the 13th, as needlessly Byzantine and lacking any means through which they could be integrated into wider strategic exigencies. Dorn's feelings upon the matter I've already touched upon, while Horus Lubacal was perhaps Alphaeus' only champion, or at least the only brother beside Ferris Manus to ever openly compliment the 20th Legion on their efficacy and abilities. Most kept their own thoughts to themselves, if they had any. The 20th maintained, as we have previously discussed, a willful separation from the remaining legions, and would appear that the Emperor's sons regarded Alphaeus with understandable weariness. It is hard to love, nevermind trust, a being who you suspect is constantly lying to you, and apparently deriving a small measure of satisfaction from that deception. There are two instances, aside from the incident with Dorn, that one can reference where Alphaeus' brothers apparently saw beyond the veneer into something more real about the individual themselves. And it is perhaps surprising the Primarchs who were responsible. The first face-to-face meeting between Alphaeus and Leman Russe, many, many decades after Alphaeus was presumably present for Russe's reuniting with the Emperor, was at a victory feast, where Russe was drunk and gregariously celebrating, or at least putting on a good show of being both. He demanded of Alphaeus a question, what are you supposed to be then, to which Alphaeus responded, naturally, I am Alphaeus. Russe, in return, clarified, he had asked what, not who, listing off the roll call of rolls and aspects each of the brothers had been assigned by their father. Alphaeus' only response was, I am the one who keeps the secrets. Russe said to have laughed, and replied, in that case, I am surprised there's only one of you. The second instance is of a similar vein. Lorgar Aurelian, arch-traitor, faithless, accursed Lorgar Aurelian, is known to have made copies of his self-pend work of philosophy, the book of Lorgar, each tailored to each of his brother's temperaments and cardinal aspects. To Pertuabo, for instance, he bequeathed a book bound in metal. To Alphaeus, he presented two copies. Herein, we catch at glimpse of the deepest mystery, the most occluded secret of Alphaeus. It is one kept by the legion and only them. If it was known to any outside it, we do not yet know. Say for what is being committed to this record, and I know not what possible clearance level this one will carry. Did Russe or Lorgar know? Did they merely suspect? Impossible to say. But, by the word of this author, we have it. The Alpha Legion, alone amongst the Emperor's twenty, had two Primarchs. Officially, they were known as Alphaeus and Omegaon, explaining perhaps why Alphaeus got his oft-used and widely known second name from. But, of course, no second name this. Another individual entirely, a twin, referred to by Alphaeus as a second half of his soul, his mirror, like him in every capacity. If the Emperor intended it thus, or if it was a product of their separation, or if the Emperor even knew what he had wrought in their creation, all of this is unknown. As with a lot of things concerning the Alpha Legion and their Primarchs, there are far more questions and answers, and even the answers do not tell the full tale. This new individual, for the sake of clarity, will hereafter be referred to as Omega. He was found by Alpha upon the world of Bar Savor, hunting the Xenos Slough, long suspected as having been part of the Rangdan Xenosides and apparently now confirmed. Indeed, Alpha's presentation to the Lion had been entirely to obtain passage into the War Zone to extract the now suspected Omega, revealing his Legion and discarding its secrecy as having been determined to be an acceptable cost for the recovery of his twin. What is especially interesting about this account is how it brings within this overall narrative an odd completeness, when the commonly recorded tales of Alphaeus's discovery are considered. In one's previous record upon the 20th Legion, I alluded to these origin myths and how, unlike his brothers, Alphaeus possessed many. One account extracted from the mind of an Alpha Legion Centurion during his interrogation by the Ligio Custodes resembles Alpha's own, with him being discovered upon a nameless dead world by human pirates. Ironically, because the official discovery myth to be related later, this account was deemed a lie by the Ligio Custodes and all Imperial historians subsequently. Yet another account refers to the Slocke as having made the Primarch their plaything on the world of Bar-Savore, twisting and warping by invasive memetics his mind, only for him to be rescued by the Emperor, spirited away to Terra for full recovery and reprogramming. Finally, there is the account that most will know of. Of a human realm encountered in the wilds of space, of Horus Lupercal taking it to task, only for a stranger to board the vengeful spirit at the height of a major naval battle, forcing his way bloodily to the Strategium, only for Horus to recognize him as the last and final Primarch, his brother, Alphaeus. Previously, each of these accounts has historically been deemed a lie. Even the most broadly accepted one of Horus finding the 20th Primarch had been muddied by the presence and spread of the others, the propagation of which was with absolute certainty the work of the Alpha Legion themselves, committed to disinformation as they were. What this leaves us with, at this point in the record, is a curious position. We can either assume they are all lies from the get-go, as Alphaeus is more of a construct in their person, this may extend to his personal history. But we can also assume that they are all shards of the same truth, fractal elements of the whole, dubbed lies only by dint of not telling the full story. The account of the Centurion to the costodes is true, the account of the Slok is true, the account of Horus finding Alphaeus is true. Because as it turns out, the ultimate reveal of Alphaeus the Primarch, Alphaeus the figurehead, was conducted by the twins in concert, with Alpha blending back into the shadows of the Legion under the guise of Omegaon, and Omegaon being the individual that Horus encountered upon the vengeful spirit, the individual henceforth known as Alphaeus. Omega became Alphaeus, Alpha became Omegaon. They would, by the word of Alpha, go on to switch these identities throughout the remainder of the Great Crusade and into the Great Heresy, meaning there is simply no means by which to verify which Primarch is which at any given time, even if they can be confirmed to be a Primarch, and not Ingo Peck or Kel Silonius, Matthias Herzog, Amelius Dinad or any number of tens of thousands of Astartes impersonating them. We are presented with the idea that the being who had been with the Emperor since the beginning of the Great Crusade, the individual who had been narrating the totality of the transit of the human soul through strife, the Alpha, was not the one that ultimately wore the face of Alphaeus. Finally, and most damnably, there is one more twist to this Byzantine tale. The tale of Omega's reveal, the attack on the vengeful spirit is told within the transit in first person. Ostensibly, it appears as Alpha. By the finale of this wretched work, it has even cast doubt upon its own narrator. Now, at the end, this taxonomy I have assigned to them, Alpha and Omega, the people, the individuals, not Alphaeus and Omega on the figures, crumbles. Has it been Omega relating this story all along, pretending to be Alpha? The very words at the beginning of this ring truer than ever. I am Alphaeus. This is a lie. If your mind has begun to unravel, I assure you, you were not alone. Such is the price paid, the cost to be endured for attempting to understand the 20th Legion, and the mysteries of Alphaeus. One supposes a soul question is paramount upon your minds at this point. Why? What could possibly be the point for such an insane degree of obfuscation, such maddeningly oblique existences? There is no answer that will suffice because they do not wish you to have one that will. The question is the point. The question is also a weapon. They have weaponized your curiosity, baiting your investigations with dead ends, partial discoveries, unsundry fabrications, the layers of them, the stratifications built up over decades, then centuries, and now millennia, to the point where no one believes no truth can ever be unearthed. Ease the point. Names have power. The Legion is not just the Alpha Legion. They are the threefold path, the unbroken chain, the azure serpent, the vigil, the strife wrought, the ghost legion, the last unity, and hundreds of other recorded names besides. They are simply the Legion, known and yet unknowable, existent and impossible to actualize. We have always treated names with power, and even more so in the cases of the Primarchs. They are mythic beings now, and were from the moment of their revelation. They are their identities, they embody their own legends, titanic beings exerting tangible weight upon history. The idea of the Primarchs carry as much heft as they do themselves, and it is in this the Alpha Legion changed the paradigm. They took this one step further, diffusing the name of Alphaeus to such a degree that it has transcended language to become a pure idea, enhancing its power in the hands of the wielder and mitigating its danger in the hands of those who mean ill. Other Astartes would undoubtedly view this as offensive in the extreme, venerating the power of their genesires in form and function, to Alpha, to Omega, to Alphaeus, to Omega, to their Legion. This does not matter. There is a translation one may proffer to that single phrase, that damnable hateful phrase, I am Alphaeus, and I take it from the author of the transit themselves. My name is unimportant. Only my function matters. That is the Alpha Legion. That is Alphaeus. They are their own selves, and they are Legion. They are a system. They are an idea. They are a weapon. We have never known them, and we never will. And that, in grandest totality, is the point of a Imperator. Gloria in Excelsis, Terra. Head on over to patreon.com slash Oculus Imperia. If you'd like to receive more updates about the channel and any future videos, you can contact me or follow me on Twitter, at Oculus Imperia. Otherwise, please like, subscribe, comment, let me know your feedback, and as ever, thank you very much for watching.