First Founding
After he conquered Terra, the Emperor of Mankind set out on a Great Crusade to re-unite the lost human colonies into a mighty Imperium. He soon realized that bog-standard humans wouldn't be enough; some situations called for a small number of devastatingly powerful warriors, a surgical strike force to smash enemy linchpins. To fill this role, he created his Primarchs, and from their genes, he created the Legiones Astartes, the twenty Space Marine Legions:
| Legion Number | Primarch | Homeworld | Name of the Legion | Allegiance | Tarot Character* |
| I | Lion El'Jonson | Caliban | Dark Angels | Loyal | THE HERMIT |
| II | +++Records expunged+++ | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| III | Fulgrim | Chemos | Emperor's Children | Traitor | THE EMPRESS |
| IV | Perturabo | Olympia | Iron Warriors | Traitor | THE DEVIL |
| V | Jaghatai Khan | Mundus Planus | White Scars | Loyal | TEMPERANCE |
| VI | Leman Russ | Fenris | Space Wolves | Loyal | THE LAST JUDGEMENT |
| VII | Rogal Dorn | Terra | Imperial Fists | Loyal | THE SUN |
| VIII | Konrad Curze | Nostramo | Night Lords | Traitor | THE MOON |
| IX | Sanguinius | Baal | Blood Angels | Loyal | THE HANGED MAN |
| X | Ferrus Manus | Medusa | Iron Hands | Loyal | JUSTICE |
| XI | +++Records expunged+++ | ||||
| XII | Angron | Unknown | World Eaters | Traitor | THE TOWER |
| XIII | Roboute Guilliman | Macragge | Ultramarines | Loyal | THE CHARIOT |
| XIV | Mortarion | Barbarus | Death Guard | Traitor | DEATH |
| XV | Magnus the Red | Prospero | Thousand Sons | Traitor | THE MAGUS |
| XVI | Horus | Cthonia | Luna Wolves/Sons of Horus | Traitor | THE EMPEROR |
| XVII | Lorgar | Colchis | Word Bearers | Traitor | THE HIEROPHANT |
| XVIII | Vulkan | Nocturne | Salamanders | Loyal | STRENGTH |
| XIX | Corax | Deliverance | Raven Guard | Loyal | THE STAR |
| XX | Alpharius Omegon | Unknown | Alpha Legion | It's very complicated | THE LOVERS |
- Tarot Details come from http://menducia.atspace.com/primarchs/IV.html
The two Lost LEGIONS align with the Second card II - The High Priestess and the Tenth Card X - Fortune. From a pure Conjecture standpoint the Characters of the Tarot align well with the 20 Primarchs and this gives a good base to suppose the attributes of the two missing primarchs.
Horus Heresy
For all their power, the Space Marines and Primarchs were not perfect; half of them were sufficiently flawed to be tempted by (or driven to) Chaos, led by Warmaster Horus. The traitors were defeated, but at a terrible cost, including the near-death of the God-Emperor of Mankind and trillions of deaths.
Roboute Guilliman decided that the so-called Horus Heresy was proof that one man could not be trusted with power over one-twentieth of the Imperial Armed Forces, so he enacted several reforms to divide the Imperial Army into the Imperial Guard and Navy, and split the remaining loyalist Legions into Chapters, in accordance with his Codex Astartes. This event was later known as the Second Founding.
<nowiki>Insert non-formatted text here</nowiki>==Two Unknown Legions==
In the First Edition of Warhammer 40,000, the twenty First Founding Chapters were all known. It seems that Games Workshop had more love for some than others; when they made fluff revisions in the transition to Second Edition, the Valedictors and Rainbow Warriors were demoted to one of the "Later Foundings."
Nowadays, nothing concrete is known about the Legions II and XI, and likewise their unknown Primarchs. It is suggested that the Space Wolves destroyed them for some reason, and in the Horus Heresy book The First Heretic, a daemon suggests to the Word Bearers that the eleventh Legion in particular did something really bad, and that the left-over Marines were folded into the Ultramarines.