The Sangprimus Portum

The Phial

The Sangprimus Portum is a small crystalline phial, said to contain the genetic essence of the original twenty Primarchs — a sample taken by the Emperor before the scattering, preserved in a stasis-sealed psychic resonance chamber. The container is, by Mechanicus uncertainty, a pre-Imperial xenos artifact whose original purpose was unrelated.

Whether the phial actually contains primarch gene-essence or simply contains something the Imperium has been told contains primarch gene-essence is, by Inquisitorial reading, an unresolved question. Trazyn has not clarified.

I am not a thief. I am the longest librarian who has ever lived.

— Trazyn the Infinite, attributed

The Theft

The phial was held in a sealed Imperial vault from the Heresy until the Macharian campaigns. During the Macharian Crusade — the period when Imperial security across the Segmentum Pacificus was at its weakest — the phial vanished. Imperial Inquisition records show no breach of the vault.

The phial was next seen on a Necron tomb world. Trazyn the Infinite, when later asked, declined to clarify how it arrived there.

The Demand

The Imperium has, for centuries, formally demanded the phial's return. Trazyn has, for centuries, politely declined. The Inquisition has classified the phial as a Tier-Black recovery priority. No recovery campaign has succeeded.

Whether the chemistry inside the phial would, if exposed, allow the cloning of new Primarchs is a question that Imperial biologis savants — and Fabius Bile, who has tried — have not been able to resolve. Trazyn has occasionally, in private correspondence, hinted that the phial's value is mostly historical. He may or may not be lying.

The Heresy-Era Origin

The Sangprimus Portum is a small phial — approximately twelve centimeters in height, of unmarked dark glass with a silver stopper — that contains, by surviving Heresy-era Imperial Cult documentation, the consolidated genetic essence of all twenty primarchs at the moment immediately preceding their pre-Crusade-era scattering across the galaxy. The phial was created by the Emperor's pre-Crusade gene-laboratory technicians as a backup reservoir; the consolidated essence would, if ever needed, allow the reconstruction of any primarch's gene-line in case of catastrophic loss.

The phial was, by Imperial Cult documentation, kept in the Emperor's personal laboratory throughout the Crusade era. Its existence was known to only a handful of senior Imperial officials. It was, by the same documentation, considered the most-secured single Imperial asset in the pre-Heresy era — more secured than the Astronomican's central array, more secured than the Imperial Palace's outer perimeters, more secured than any single primarch's primary residence.

In Trazyn's Collection

The Sangprimus Portum's current location is, by Inquisitorial confirmation, Trazyn the Infinite's personal collection on the Necron tomb-world of Solemnace. Trazyn acquired the phial during the Macharian Crusade era (approximately 395.M41), when his tomb-jackals intercepted an Imperial Inquisitorial expedition that had been close to recovering the phial from a sealed Imperial archive in the Halo Stars region. Trazyn's specific method of acquisition is, by his own subsequent communications with Imperial diplomats, "legitimate by the standards of pre-Imperial archaeology" — a characterisation the Imperium has not endorsed.

The Imperium has, since Trazyn's acquisition, made twenty-three separate formal requests for the phial's return. Trazyn has politely declined all twenty-three. His standard response, in his communications with Imperial diplomats, is that the phial is a "category-anomalous artifact whose pre-Heresy origin makes it a Necron-historical interest rather than an Imperial property." The Imperium has not accepted the characterisation. The phial remains on Solemnace.

The Indomitus-Era Question

The Indomitus Crusade has raised a specific operational question about the Sangprimus Portum that prior Imperial generations had not addressed: with multiple primarchs now returning from various non-physical states, does the Imperium still need the phial as a gene-line backup? The question's pragmatic implication is that, if the Imperium does not need the phial, the diplomatic effort to recover it from Trazyn could be redirected to other Indomitus-era priorities.

The Inquisition's classified internal review, conducted in 030.M42, concluded that the phial remains operationally important for two reasons: first, the returning primarchs are not all primarchs (two — Russ and the Khan — have not yet returned, and the missing Second and Eleventh remain missing); second, the phial's consolidated essence might be applicable to primarch-class gene-engineering in a way that Cawl's individual-primarch reconstruction work could not directly substitute. Guilliman has, in his personal log entry on the review, accepted the conclusion and instructed the Imperium's diplomatic apparatus to continue requesting Trazyn's return of the phial. The diplomatic effort has not produced new results.